Rosario Castellanos was born on May 25, 1925 in Mexico City, Mexico. The city had over a million people living there at the time. Castellanos grew up in the city of Comitán. Her family was wealthy and had plenty of land until President Lázaro Cárdenas passed a land reform, which stripped the family of much of their land. A year later, her parents died and she was left to live alone at the age of 16. Castellanos wrote many poems about gender oppression and inequality throughout her life. Today, she is considered as one of Mexico’s greatest literary voices in the last century. The theme of her poem “Chess” is that friendships don’t always last and the strongest friendships/relationships can break and turn hateful over the smallest things. Castellanos
