Six Months in Mexico

Join crusading journalist Nellie Bly on her captivating 1885 journey to Mexico! When Bly’s Pittsburgh Dispatch exposé of the plight of female workers drew ire from factory owners, she was assigned to “feminine” subjects. Dreading that purgatory, scrappy 21-year-old Bly went south of the border to report on life and customs. Compiled as Six Months in Mexico, Bly’s articles cover lovemaking, home life, architecture, addiction, political corruption and more. The book is a travelogue, a vintage history, a social critique. Bly observed the country through a distinctly American, opinionated, often affectionate, female lens. She criticized Mexican foibles but also skewered Americans who didn’t match some high standards she encountered on Mexican soil. Bly wondered at the poverty and nobility of the common people. She was bent on never being cheated of a centavo. She frankly appreciated good-looking Mexicanos. She described courtship rituals, detailed the national passion for bullfighting and abhorred the lack of press freedom. Having protested the imprisonment of a Mexican journalist who criticized then-dictator Porfirio Diaz, Bly faced arrest and had to make a quick departure. Fortunately she returned to provide this amazing snapshot of life in Mexico a century and a half ago.