Liliana's Invincible Summer

Reviews

A personal and cultural look at femicide in Mexico Not everything can be put into words, especially grief and rage, no matter how precise and skilled the writing is. The beauty of this book is that it reaches for that truth regardless, and in doing so, Liliana becomes indelible. She is so fully realized that by the end, the reader is also mourning. I will be thinking of Liliana for a very long time, perhaps forever Despite her furnace of rage, Rivera Garza maintains perfect composure . . . Each tightly drawn chapter showcases an array of gorgeous images or cadences; few authors deploy fragments as brilliantly, like grenades … Both a master stroke and a critical inflection point in her country’s brutal, patriarchal politics Anger at this lack of accountability seethes through Ms Rivera Garza’s book. Her main goal, however, is not an abstract analysis of femicide but to chronicle a life lost to it. She does so movingly . . . Absorbing and poetic By displaying the fragmented, liminal space in which Liliana and her friends discuss Liliana’s life, Rivera Garza is bearing witness to the dearth of ways they had to speak about violence that was right in front of them . . . Rivera Garza’s book makes me certain, it shouldn’t be a woman’s responsibility to teach society about the dangers she faces A moving, heart-wrenching memoir as well as an unflinching appraisal of the widespread violence against women in Mexico Liliana’s Invincible Summer bravely examines society’s methodical misogyny and the devastating long-term effects a murder has on a family. How grief keeps a different clock. How a family are placed in limbo land. But most moving of all is the way a bereaved sister manages to give Liliana back her voice so that Liliana is brimful of life Rivera Garza’s book is a blueprint of one woman’s murder, but it is the trail of hundreds of thousands of women throughout the globe. I was shaken and alerted by her investigation into her own grief. It has educated me to speak up as she has bravely done Warning: Cristina Rivera Garza is an explosive writer. A dexterous creator of atmospheres, with a powerful style, an evocative and indomitable language Cristina Rivera Garza is a masterful storyteller. Through extensive research she reconstructs her sister’s murder and the investigation that followed. Though deeply personal, this work is also a strong protest against the high number of femicides in Mexico and the absence of justice [Rivera Garza] has written something almost miraculous: not a cold case file or a true crime, but an attempt to recover Liliana's life, her spark, her youth, taken away with such cruelty that somehow society has failed to condemn with enough fury . . . Full of tenderness and beauty. This book is a revelation and a restoration of her sister's memory from victim to vibrant young woman The heart-filled writing of this genre-bending book is a political act, a manifesto against patriarchy and the ‘straightjacket of machismo.’ In a just world Liliana’s Invincible Summer would become required reading, and maybe then, just maybe, women can begin to live in a safer world Sisterhood as mystery, yearning, and ghosted affection. Cristina was as close to her sister in life, as she was distant from her after Liliana’s tragic and untimely death. It is this unreconcilable divide, and Cristina’s efforts to bridge it, that makes Liliana’s Invincible Summer a haunting testimony Reading this astounding, lyrical, and brilliant book will open your heart and break it, leaving you more vulnerable to both love and rage . . . Read this book to find yourself in powerful company with all who demand justice and with it a new world In a world that denies women justice, how do we attend to those killed by femicide? Held by Garza’s exquisite prose, we remember, we grieve, we rage. Reimagining what archives can do, Rivera Garza excavates police reports, diary accounts, interviews, and memory, compiling a memoir where nothing escapes grief’s investigation – not love, injustice, the self, sisterhood, state violence, patriarchy, the pleasure of women. Our remaining task? To find new means to attend to and protect one another. To miss Liliana, too Expand reviews