Liliana's Invincible Summer

Warning: Cristina Rivera Garza is an explosive writer. A dexterous creator of atmospheres, with a powerful style, an evocative and indomitable language -- Lina Merwane, praise for Cristina Rivera Garza 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 -- Jennifer Clement, author of GUN LOVE It took Cristina Rivera Garza thirty years to write about her sister Liliana's death. Years of silence and guilt and fear. But now she 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. The writing, both Cristina's and Liliana's, via her diaries, is full of tenderness and beauty. This book is a revelation and a restoration of her sister's memory from victim to vibrant young woman -- Mariana Enriquez, author of THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED Cristina Rivera Garza has done the unimaginable work - through letters, photos, and transcribing interviews - of stepping into her twenty-year-old sister's footprints as she meticulously recounts Liliana's time on this earth. 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 -- Javier Zamora, author of SOLITO and UNACCOMPANIED 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 -- Quiara Alegria Hudes, author of MY BROKEN LANGUAGE Reading this astounding, lyrical, and brilliant book will open your heart and break it, leaving you more vulnerable to both love and rage. Cristina Rivera Garza rips the veil of acceptance off the brutality that structures and dictates our lives, the patriarchal murderousness that wants us to believe it is inevitable. No. This book says 'no' to that lie by courageously, painstakingly, beautifully rendering Liliana - a beloved sister taken by that violence. Read this book to find yourself in powerful company with all who demand justice and with it a new world -- Julie Carr, author of REAL LIFE In Liliana's Invincible Summer, we seek justice for Liliana Rivera Garza - a vibrant woman who, as the young often do, inhabited realms of possibility, hunger, beauty. But 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 -- Hafizah Augustus Geter, author of THE BLACK PERIOD and UN-AMERICAN