Shortly before Frida Kahlo died in 1954, she underwent surgery to have her right leg amputated below the knee. Her doctors had discovered complications in her foot caused by a lifetime of pain and injury. At this point in her life, they detected the spread of gangrene.  Frida was born with polio, and when she was a teen, she suffered crippling injury when she was caught up in the middle of a trolley accident.  Her spine was crushed and her pelvis shattered.  The handrail from the bus she was riding detached from the wall;  the sharp broken end punctured her uterus.  At age forty seven, Frida gave up her leg, and in return, she received a a wooden prosthetic.  Sadly, she lived only  one more year before she died.  Up until the very end she wore beautiful indigenous floor-length skirts and thick socks to hide the results of her surgery. At the end of the wooden leg she attached a bright red boot. Nothing, it seemed, was going to cramp her style or dampen her spirit.  I have a copy of her diary here on my shelves in Mexicali.  At the time of the amputation she wrote, “Pies para que los quiero, si tengo alas pa’ volar?” (Feet, what do I need them for if I have wings to fly?)

This Spring 2026, I’m reading Mexican author F.G. Haghnbeck’s  biographical novel Frida’s Secret Book with two of my classes.  You won’t find this one on any department reading list, but I now have read it FOUR times: TWICE in Spanish; TWICE in English.  I know, I know I might be going against the grain with this choice.  The novel is 345 pages long.  It will take us all semester long to complete.  Many of my incoming students will have little or no positive experience with novel reading projects, but I hope this will be different. I’ve set up a series of writing projects that will pull my students through.  The novel deals with LOVE and PAIN and SEX and HISTORY and NATURE and FAMILY and BETRAYAL.  This is all before we even touch upon Frida’s ART and STYLE and INDEPENDENT THINKING.  My students will have their pick from exciting topics to write about.  There is even a lot of COOKING and DRINKING and DRUG ABUSE.  My goal is to engage them in the story of an important cultural icon.  We are still talking about Frida seventy years after her death.   Frida is a LOVER and a GENIUS and a REBEL. Why do students have to look at novel reading as a heavy workload?  Reading for enjoyment is something we should all be doing.  LET’S GO!

On the first week of class, I will be able to share the trolley accident scene from Salma Hayek’s biopic, Frida.  I found access to it on our campus databases.  This will be cool.  I can make a smooth transition from the movie to our research responsibilities.  The movie scene is violent and heartbreaking at the same time, but the worse part is soon to come. Frida was confined to a bed for three months, and for the rest of her life she would be forced to wear plaster corsets.    She  spent a life time in and out of  physical therapy,  but eventually Frida discovered for whatever she lost, she could create. During this time, her father gave her a box of paints and her mother arranged for a carpenter to build an easel by her bed. Through her painting, she could shape an entirely new life and identity. She decided that all the physical and emotional pain she suffered could make her stronger.   I believe my students will create strong links between Frida’s life experiences and her art.

Many, if not most, of my students are of Mexican heritage. Quite often, they will have deeper insight into the themes and ideas of this book than I do.  Above all, Frida loved her Mexico.  Her father was a German immigrant, and her mother was an indigenous Oaxacan. Frida had grown up a Revolution Baby, in a Mexico where people celebrated a new mestizo heritage.  I like to show in class a page from her diary where she claims her birthdate to be 1910.  Factually, she was born in 1907, but she draws a lifetime of inspiration from 1910 – the outbreak year of the Mexican Revolution.   Maybe that is what makes her art so unique.  In one hand, she has a firm grasp on the past, and with the other, she paints to the future.  I love her style.    Her diary is replete with pictures and paintings of her dressed in the Tehuana costumes of her Indian heritage.  Frida grew up in the modest neighborhood of Coyoacán. Throughout her lifetime she maintained a strong connection with ther  working class neighbors.  The women wore huapil tunics and indigenous dresses.  Frida loved the bright colors she saw in the streets.  My favorite painting of hers might be her wedding day self-portrait where she is standing hand in hand with her husband to be Diego Rivera.  She’s not wearing white; she’s wearing the red, white and green of the mexican flag.    Art critics will forever debate Frida Kahlo’s eccentric painting style, but I will always believe her genius begins and ends with her life-long devotion to her Mexican culture.

 In our reading of the novel The Secret Life of Frida Kahlo, we will come across a chapter that dramatizes Frida’s appreciation of the Mexican concept of Death. I mean, we are all born to die.   Frida dedicated herself to living each day to the fullest. When Frida was commissioned to paint a retablo in memorandum of a friend that had tragrically died by suicide, she created a violent image of the young woman falling to her death from the heights of a New York skyscraper.   The title of this painting was The Suicide of Dorothy Hale.  The person who bought it thought it so revolting she wanted it immediately destroyed. Frida knew that many people thought her artwork may have been shocking and cruel, but she didn’t care.  For Frida, her painting was her life.  She felt compelled to remain true to her artistic vision and Mexican ideals.   I know.  I know, many people who look at Frida’s art will make connections between her life of physical pain and the disturbing imagery in her paintings.   She was born with a crooked spine, and that was only the beginning of her injuries.  In reading about Frida, it seemed like it was just one accident and/or illness after another.  This includes the crushing emotional consequences of  her long-lasting love relationship with Diego Rivera.   I believe she drew inspiration from the Mexican revolutionaries that came before her.  She was one tough woman.  She once said, “At the end of the day, we can endure much more [pain] than we think we can.”

I feel good about my Spring Semester 2026.  When my students begin their semester they will recognize their instructor’s excitement for All Things Frida.  I plan to push a few students to write their research papers on La Casa Azul.  This is the home where Frida was raised in Coyacan.  Frida was born there and lived most of her life in this house until she died in 1954.  It’s been turned into a museum, and you can  walk through the courtyard and the bedroom and her art studio,  everything  preserved exactly like it was.   I know this because I visited two or three times.  Way back when, before most of my students were born, I participated in a bilingual teaching program for California teachers. I spent a year in  D.F. working in the public schools by day and taking teaching classes from Mexican professors at night.  This is where I learned my Spanish, but just as important, this is where I learned about my Frida.

In the museum,  I bought a copy of Frida’s Diary that was published after her death.  F.G. Haghenbeck, the author of the Secret Book of Frida, must have done likewise.  Much of Frida’s musings from her diary are reflected in his novel.  One of my favorite entries is the “Origen de las Fridas” where Frida reveals her secret friend.  She writes of a time when she was just six years old and alone, and she used to stand up to the window pane of the family house on Allende Street in Mexico City and breathe gently on the glass.   As her respiration clouded up, she would take her finger and draw an imaginary door, and dance right through it because waiting for her on the other side was  her only friend in the world:  Her other self.   The other Frida!  Together the two of them would spend their afternoons sharing their inner-most secrets.   I must have read this part time over and over; this poor, lonely girl suffering from polio with the wasted muscles and deformed foot making her life happen.