“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).
I seek justice, I finally said. I seek justice for my sister. . . . Sometimes it takes twenty-nine years to say it out loud, to say it out loud on a phone call with a lawyer at the General Attorney’s office: I seek justice.
September 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 wrote 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—and Cristina knows there is only a slim chance of recovering the file. And yet, inspired by feminist movements across the world and enraged by the global epidemic of femicide and intimate partner violence, she embarks on a path toward justice. Liliana’s Invincible Summer is the account—and the outcome—of that extraordinary quest.
In luminous, poetic prose, Rivera Garza tells a singular yet universally resonant story: that of a spirited, wondrously hopeful young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. Following her decision to recover her sister’s file, Rivera Garza traces the history of Liliana’s life, from her early romance with a handsome but possessive and short-tempered man, to that exhilarating final summer of 1990 when Liliana loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before.
Using her remarkable talents 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 render and understand a life beyond the crime itself. Through this remarkable and genre-defying memoir, Rivera Garza confronts the trauma of losing her sister and examines from multiple angles how this tragedy continues to shape who she is—and what she fights for—today.
I seek justice, I finally said. I seek justice for my sister. . . . Sometimes it takes twenty-nine years to say it out loud, to say it out loud on a phone call with a lawyer at the General Attorney’s office: I seek justice.
September 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 wrote 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—and Cristina knows there is only a slim chance of recovering the file. And yet, inspired by feminist movements across the world and enraged by the global epidemic of femicide and intimate partner violence, she embarks on a path toward justice. Liliana’s Invincible Summer is the account—and the outcome—of that extraordinary quest.
In luminous, poetic prose, Rivera Garza tells a singular yet universally resonant story: that of a spirited, wondrously hopeful young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. Following her decision to recover her sister’s file, Rivera Garza traces the history of Liliana’s life, from her early romance with a handsome but possessive and short-tempered man, to that exhilarating final summer of 1990 when Liliana loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before.
Using her remarkable talents 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 render and understand a life beyond the crime itself. Through this remarkable and genre-defying memoir, Rivera Garza confronts the trauma of losing her sister and examines from multiple angles how this tragedy continues to shape who she is—and what she fights for—today.
“Cristina Rivera Garza wanted to shed light on the life of her sister, killed 30 years ago. Her book, part of a larger call for justice by women in Mexico, helped locate the suspect. . . . [Liliana's Invincible Summer] is the record of a woman who, against the odds, refuses to be forgotten.”—The New York Times
“Women across the world are killed at shocking rates by men, usually partners or former ones…. Anger at this lack of accountability seethes through Ms. Rivera Garza’s book. Her main goal, however, is not abstract analysis of femicide but to chronicle a life lost to it. She does so movingly…. Absorbing and poetic.”—The Economist
“An acclaimed author and essayist, Cristina Rivera Garza … begins with her quest to track down the case files. When the paper trail hits a dead end, she turns her detective work to her sister’s personal archive, motivated to memorialise Liliana in the absence of an institutional record…. Interviews with family and friends form a chorus of regret. Liliana’s parents’ testimonies are laden with the grief of unspeakable loss.”—The Spectator
“Liliana’s Invincible Summer is a blueprint of one woman’s murder, but it is also the story of hundreds of thousands of women throughout the globe. I was shaken and alerted by Cristina Rivera Garza’s investigation into her own grief. It has inspired me to speak up as she has bravely done.”—Sandra Cisneros
“Cristina Rivera Garza has written something almost miraculous: not a cold case file or true crime story, but an attempt to recover Liliana’s life, her spark, her youth, taken away with such cruelty. This book is a revelation.”—Mariana Enriquez, author of Our Share of Night
“Reading this astounding, lyrical, and brilliant book will open your heart and break it, leaving you more vulnerable to both love and rage.”—Julie Carr, author of Real Life
“The heart-filled writing of this genre-bending book is a political act, a manifesto against patriarchy and the ‘straightjacket of machismo.’”—Javier Zamora, author of Solito
“This is sisterhood as mystery, yearning, and ghosted affection.”—Quiara Alegría Hudes, author of My Broken Language
“Cristina 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, or the pleasure of women.”—Hafizah Augustus Geter, author of The Black Period
“Cristina Rivera Garza is a masterful storyteller. 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
“This piercing remembrance hits home.”—Publishers Weekly
“A moving, heart-wrenching memoir as well as an unflinching appraisal of the widespread violence against women in Mexico.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Women across the world are killed at shocking rates by men, usually partners or former ones…. Anger at this lack of accountability seethes through Ms. Rivera Garza’s book. Her main goal, however, is not abstract analysis of femicide but to chronicle a life lost to it. She does so movingly…. Absorbing and poetic.”—The Economist
“An acclaimed author and essayist, Cristina Rivera Garza … begins with her quest to track down the case files. When the paper trail hits a dead end, she turns her detective work to her sister’s personal archive, motivated to memorialise Liliana in the absence of an institutional record…. Interviews with family and friends form a chorus of regret. Liliana’s parents’ testimonies are laden with the grief of unspeakable loss.”—The Spectator
“Liliana’s Invincible Summer is a blueprint of one woman’s murder, but it is also the story of hundreds of thousands of women throughout the globe. I was shaken and alerted by Cristina Rivera Garza’s investigation into her own grief. It has inspired me to speak up as she has bravely done.”—Sandra Cisneros
“Cristina Rivera Garza has written something almost miraculous: not a cold case file or true crime story, but an attempt to recover Liliana’s life, her spark, her youth, taken away with such cruelty. This book is a revelation.”—Mariana Enriquez, author of Our Share of Night
“Reading this astounding, lyrical, and brilliant book will open your heart and break it, leaving you more vulnerable to both love and rage.”—Julie Carr, author of Real Life
“The heart-filled writing of this genre-bending book is a political act, a manifesto against patriarchy and the ‘straightjacket of machismo.’”—Javier Zamora, author of Solito
“This is sisterhood as mystery, yearning, and ghosted affection.”—Quiara Alegría Hudes, author of My Broken Language
“Cristina 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, or the pleasure of women.”—Hafizah Augustus Geter, author of The Black Period
“Cristina Rivera Garza is a masterful storyteller. 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
“This piercing remembrance hits home.”—Publishers Weekly
“A moving, heart-wrenching memoir as well as an unflinching appraisal of the widespread violence against women in Mexico.”—Kirkus Reviews
