Cristina Rivera Garza's Books

Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner)

A Sister's Search for Justice

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner)

A Sister's Search for Justice

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A searing account of grief and the quest to bring her sister’s murderer to justice years after the fact” (The Boston Globe), from “one of Mexico’s greatest living writers” (Jonathan Lethem). “Part memoir, part true-crime story, Garza’s chronicle is both personal and political.”—The Washington Post A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, Chicago Public Library, She Reads, Electric Lit October 18, 2019. Cristina Rivera Garza travels from her home in Texas to Mexico City, in search of an old, unresolved criminal file. “My name is Cristina Rivera Garza,” she writes in her request to the attorney general, “and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered on July 16, 1990.” It’s been twenty-nine years. Twenty-nine years, three months, and two days since Liliana was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend. Inspired by feminist movements across the world and enraged by the global epidemic of femicide and intimate partner violence, Cristina embarks on a path toward justice. Liliana’s Invincible Summer is the account—and the outcome—of that quest . In luminous, poetic prose, Rivera Garza tells a singular yet universally resonant story: Liliana is a spirited, wondrously hopeful young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. Rivera Garza traces her sister’s history, depicting everything from Liliana’s early romance with a handsome but possessive and short-tempered man to that exhilarating final summer of 1990 when she loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before. Using her skills as an acclaimed scholar, novelist, and poet, Rivera Garza collected and curated evidence—handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, interviews with Liliana’s loved ones—to document her sister’s life. Through this remarkable and genre-defying memoir, she confronts the trauma of losing her sister and examines how this tragedy continues to shape who she is—and what she fights for—today.

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321

Publisher

Hogarth

Published Date

ISBN 10

0593244109

ISBN 13

9780593244104

Grieving

Dispatches from a Wounded Country

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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Grieving

Dispatches from a Wounded Country

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

Finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics’ Circle Award for Criticism By one of Mexico's greatest contemporary writers, this investigation into state violence and mourning gives voice to the political experience of collective pain. Grieving is a hybrid collection of short crónicas, journalism, and personal essays on systemic violence in contemporary Mexico and along the US-Mexico border. Drawing together literary theory and historical analysis, she outlines how neoliberalism, corruption, and drug trafficking—culminating in the misnamed “war on drugs”—has shaped her country. Working from and against this political context, Cristina Rivera Garza posits that collective grief is an act of resistance against state violence, and that writing is a powerful mode of seeking social justice and embodying resilience. She states: “As we write, as we work with language—the humblest and most powerful force available to us—we activate the potential of words, phrases, sentences. Writing as we grieve, grieving as we write: a practice able to create refuge from the open. Writing with others. Grieving like someone who takes refuge from the open. Grieving, which is always a radically different mode of writing.” “A lucid, poignant collection of essays and poetry. . . . deeply hopeful, ultimately love letters to writing itself, and to the power of language to overcome the silence that impunity imposes.” —New York Times Book Review "For all the losses tallied, the pieces are imbued with optimism and an activist’s passion for reshaping the world." —The New Yorker

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Page Count

122

Publisher

Feminist Press at CUNY

Published Date

ISBN 10

1936932946

ISBN 13

9781936932948

New and Selected Stories

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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New and Selected Stories

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

A story collection drawn from across her career brings into English for the first time the extraordinary stylistic and thematic range of the Mexican writer and MacArthur “genius” Cristina Rivera Garza. “One of Mexico’s greatest living writers,” wrote Jonathan Lethem in 2018 about Cristina Rivera Garza, “we are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer.” In the years since, Rivera Garza’s work has received widespread recognition: She was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant for fiction that “interrogates culturally constructed notions of language, memory, and gender from a transnational perspective,” and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Yet we have still only started to discover the full range of a writer who is at once an incisive voice on migration, borders, and violence against women, as well as a high stylist in the manner of Lispector or Duras. New and Selected Stories now brings together in English translation stories from across Rivera Garza’s career, drawing from three collections spanning over 30 years and including new writing not yet published in Spanish. It is a unique and remarkable body of work, and a window into the ever-evolving stylistic and thematic development of one of the boldest, most original and affecting writers in the world today.

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258

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

194898010X

ISBN 13

9781948980104

The Taiga Syndrome

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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The Taiga Syndrome

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

Fairy tale meets detective drama in this David Lynch–like novel by a writer Jonathan Lethem calls “one of Mexico's greatest . . . we are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer.” A fairy tale run amok, The Taiga Syndrome follows an unnamed Ex-Detective as she searches for a couple who has fled to the far reaches of the earth. A betrayed husband is convinced by a brief telegram that his second ex-wife wants him to track her down—that she wants to be found. He hires the Ex-Detective, who sets out with a translator into a snowy, hostile forest where strange things happen and translation betrays both sense and one’s senses. Tales of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood haunt the Ex-Detective’s quest into a territory overrun with the primitive excesses of Capitalism—accumulation and expulsion, corruption and cruelty—though the lessons of her journey are more experiential than moral: that just as love can fly away, sometimes unloving flies away as well. That sometimes leaving everything behind is the only thing left to do.

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Page Count

130

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0997366672

ISBN 13

9780997366679

The Iliac Crest

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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The Iliac Crest

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

Surreal and gothic, The Iliac Crest is a masterful excavation of forgotten Mexican women writers, illustrating the myriad ways that gendered language can wield destructive power. On a dark and stormy night, two mysterious women invade an unnamed narrator’s house, where they proceed to ruthlessly question their host’s identity. The women are strangely intimate―even inventing together an incomprehensible, fluid language―and harass the narrator by repeatedly claiming that they know his greatest secret: that he is, in fact, a woman. As the increasingly frantic protagonist fails to defend his supposed masculinity, he eventually finds himself in a sanatorium. Published for the first time in English, this Gothic tale is “utterly weird yet deeply resonant in its portrayal of gendered violence” (The Millions). Through layered and haunting prose, Cristina Rivera Garza unravels the cultural and political histories of Mexico, probing at the misogyny that fuels the disappearance of women in literature and in real life. "Astounding and thought-provoking." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “An intelligent, beautiful story about bodies disguised as a story about language disguised as a story about night terrors. Cristina Rivera Garza does not respect what is expected of a writer, of a novel, of language. She is an agitator.” —Yuri Herrera, author of Kingdom Cons

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Feminist Press at CUNY

Published Date

ISBN 10

1936932067

ISBN 13

9781936932061

Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner)

A Sister's Search for Justice

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner)

A Sister's Search for Justice

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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Page Count

321

Publisher

Hogarth

Published Date

ISBN 10

0593244117

ISBN 13

9780593244111

Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World

The Alchemy Lecture 2023

By: Phoebe Boswell,Saidiya Hartman,Janaína Oliveira,Joseph M. Pierce,Cristina Rivera Garza

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Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World

The Alchemy Lecture 2023

By: Phoebe Boswell,Saidiya Hartman,Janaína Oliveira,Joseph M. Pierce,Cristina Rivera Garza

Five Alchemists. One book. A constellation of ideas. The second annual Alchemy Lecture was presented in November 2023 at York University to a sold out in-person audience and nearly one thousand live online viewers. Moderated by Dr. Christina Sharpe, the Alchemists—agile thinkers and practitioners working across a range of disciplines and geographies—convened to discuss their radical visions of the beautiful world, and the manifestos that may help to guide us there. Their treatises have been captured and luminously expanded in the pages of this book. Cherokee Nation citizen and professor Joseph M. Pierce asserts that “[f]or this decolonial future to become possible, the guiding force must no longer be capital but relations.” Informed by her practice of “curation as care,” Brazilian film curator Janaína Oliveira evokes music and movement as a means toward this relationality: “it's almost by falling that you live. . . . The beautiful world dances the stumbles. The beautiful world dances dancing.” Kenyan-British visual artist Phoebe Boswell uses the space of a virtual gallery to ask, “If we burn down the institution, what happens next? Do we trust ourselves to know?” and gestures toward the possibility of this “as yet unlived, unexperienced thing.” Professor and MacArthur fellow Saidiya Hartman asks us to consider our capacity to burn, stating that “[P]ragmatism yields a profound tolerance of the unlivable.” And Mexican-American author Cristina Rivera Garza gives us the language of the future in the subjunctive, which “lays the groundwork for the irruption. . . . The subjunctive is the smuggler who crosses the border of the future bearing unknown cargo.” Each Alchemist is intimately concerned with the shape of this cargo and our ability to bear its weight, together. Through these expansive, transformative essays, new ways of being are threaded and proposed, illuminating our path towards this possible beautiful world.

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Page Count

177

Publisher

Alchemy by Knopf Canada

Published Date

ISBN 10

1039055982

ISBN 13

9781039055988

The Iliac Crest

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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The Iliac Crest

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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Feminist Press at CUNY

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ISBN 10

1936932067

ISBN 13

9781936932061

Grieving

Dispatches from a Wounded Country

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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Grieving

Dispatches from a Wounded Country

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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122

Publisher

Feminist Press at CUNY

Published Date

ISBN 10

1936932946

ISBN 13

9781936932948

New and Selected Stories

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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New and Selected Stories

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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258

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

194898010X

ISBN 13

9781948980104

The Taiga Syndrome

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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The Taiga Syndrome

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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130

Publisher

New York Review of Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0997366672

ISBN 13

9780997366679

The Restless Dead

Necrowriting and Disappropriation

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

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The Restless Dead

Necrowriting and Disappropriation

By: Cristina Rivera Garza

Based on comparative readings of contemporary books from Latin America, Spain, and the United States, the essays in this book present a radical critique against strategies of literary appropriation that were once thought of as neutral, and even concomitant, components of the writing process. Debunking the position of the author as the center of analysis, Cristina Rivera Garza argues for the communality—a term used by anthropologist Floriberto Díaz to describe modes of life of Indigenous peoples of Oaxaca based on notions of collaborative labor—permeating all writing processes. Disappropriating is a political operation at the core of projects acknowledging, both at ethical and aesthetic levels, that writers always work with materials that are not their own. Writers borrow from the practitioners of a language, entering in a debt relationship that can only be covered by ushering the text back to the communities from which it grew. In a world rife with violence, where the experiences of many are erased by pillage and extraction, writing among and for the dead is a form of necrowriting that may well become a life-affirming act of decolonization and resistance.

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Page Count

248

Publisher

Vanderbilt University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0826501230

ISBN 13

9780826501233

Occupying Our Space

The Mestiza Rhetorics of Mexican Women Journalists and Activists, 1875–1942

By: Cristina Devereaux Ramírez

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Occupying Our Space

The Mestiza Rhetorics of Mexican Women Journalists and Activists, 1875–1942

By: Cristina Devereaux Ramírez

Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award Winner Occupying Our Space sheds new light on the contributions of Mexican women journalists and writers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, marked as the zenith of Mexican journalism. Journalists played a significant role in transforming Mexican social and political life before and after the Revolution (1910–1920), and women were a part of this movement as publishers, writers, public speakers, and political activists. However, their contributions to the broad historical changes associated with the Revolution, as well as the pre- and post-revolutionary eras, are often excluded or overlooked. This book fills a gap in feminine rhetorical history by providing an in-depth look at several important journalists who claimed rhetorical puestos, or public speaking spaces. The book closely examines the writings of Laureana Wright de Kleinhans (1842–1896), Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza (1875–1942), the political group Las mujeres de Zitácuaro (1900), Hermila Galindo (1896–1954), and others. Grounded in the overarching theoretical lens of mestiza rhetoric, Occupying Our Space considers the ways in which Mexican women journalists negotiated shifting feminine identities and the emerging national politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With full-length Spanish primary documents along with their translations, this scholarship reframes the conversation about the rhetorical and intellectual role women played in the ever-changing political and identity culture in Mexico.

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Page Count

273

Publisher

University of Arizona Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

081650203X

ISBN 13

9780816502035

Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World

The Alchemy Lecture 2023

By: Phoebe Boswell,Saidiya Hartman,Janaína Oliveira,Joseph M. Pierce,Cristina Rivera Garza

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Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World

The Alchemy Lecture 2023

By: Phoebe Boswell,Saidiya Hartman,Janaína Oliveira,Joseph M. Pierce,Cristina Rivera Garza

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

177

Publisher

Alchemy by Knopf Canada

Published Date

ISBN 10

1039055982

ISBN 13

9781039055988

Book's by Cristina Rivera Garza

Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner)

Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner)

Grieving

Grieving

New and Selected Stories

New and Selected Stories

The Taiga Syndrome

The Taiga Syndrome

The Iliac Crest

The Iliac Crest

Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner)

Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner)

Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World

Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World

The Iliac Crest

The Iliac Crest

Grieving

Grieving

New and Selected Stories

New and Selected Stories

The Taiga Syndrome

The Taiga Syndrome

The Restless Dead

The Restless Dead

Occupying Our Space

Occupying Our Space

Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World

Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World

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