Politics & Government
![Cristina Rivera Garza - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001JWPF9Y.jpg)
Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice
"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.
Editorial Reviews
"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
"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
"Cristina Rivera Garza has done the unimaginable work 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.'"-Javier Zamora, author of Solito
"This is 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 this book a haunting testimony."-Quiara Alegría Hudes, author of My Broken Language
"Reimagining what archives can do, 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
"Cri...
"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
"Cristina Rivera Garza has done the unimaginable work 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.'"-Javier Zamora, author of Solito
"This is 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 this book a haunting testimony."-Quiara Alegría Hudes, author of My Broken Language
"Reimagining what archives can do, 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
"Cri...
Readers Top Reviews
Short Excerpt Teaser
I
Azcapotzalco
Time heals everything, except wounds. -Chris Marker, Sans Soleil
[here, under this branch, you can speak of love]
The tree is brimming with invisible birds. At first I think it must be an elm tree-it has the same sturdy and solitary trunk supporting the sprawling branches that I recognize from my childhood-but soon, just a couple days later, it is clear that it is an aspen, a foreign species transplanted long ago to this part of Mexico City, an area poor in native vegetation. We sit beneath it, right on the edge of a yellow curb. The sun slowly setting. Across the busy street and behind tall metal gates, gray factory towers stretch upward, and heavy power lines bend, barely horizontal, against the sky. Trailers drive by at great speed, as do taxis and cars. Bicycles. Of all the evening noises, the sound of birds is the most unexpected. I have the impression that if we move beyond the tree's shadow we will not be able to hear them anymore. Here, under this branch, you can speak of love.// Beyond lies the law, the need, / the trail of force, the preserve of terror./ The fief of punishment. // Beyond here, no. But we listen to them and in some absurd, perhaps unreasonable, way their repetitive and insistent singing triggers a calm that cannot erase disbelief. Do you think she will come? I ask Sorais as she lights a cigarette. The lawyer? Yes, she. I have never known what to call that movement, when lips pressed together stretch toward one side of the face, dismissing any illusion of symmetry. I'm sure we'll see her soon, she says in response, spitting out a strand of tobacco. In any case, it wouldn't hurt to wait another half hour. Or another hour. Looking at her sideways, hesitantly, I have to admit to myself that I mentioned the lawyer because I wanted to avoid asking her to wait with me. Supplicate is the verb. I did not want to beg. I did not want to beg you to wait here with me for a little longer because I don't know if I will be able to, Sorais. Because I don't know what animal I am unleashing deep within. We are now six hours and twenty minutes into a journey that started at noon, in what now seems to have been another city, another geological era, another planet.
[twenty-nine years, three months, two days]
We'd agreed to meet at noon at the place where I was staying. An old house turned into a boutique hotel. A white fence flanked by bougainvillea and vines. An old gravel passageway. Palm trees. Rose bushes. And while I wait for Sorais with some anticipation, I don't take my eyes off the city on the other side of the windows. It welcomes just about everyone, this city. It kills just about anyone too. Lavish and unhealthy at the same time, cumulative, overwhelming. Adjectives are never enough. When Sorais arrives at the house that is to be my home those few autumn days in Mexico City, I don't know if I will be able to.
There are two things I must do today, I tell her right away as we hug and exchange greetings. The aroma of soap in her hair. The moisture of her skin after a hot bath. Her voice, which I have known for years. Well let's go then, she answers immediately, without even asking for more details. It might take all day, I warn her. And it is then that she pauses, looking into my eyes. So where are we going? The intrigue in her voice betrays expectation, not suspicion. I am silent. Sometimes it takes a bit of silence for words to come together on the tip of the tongue and, once there, for them to jump, to take the unimaginable leap. This dive into unknown waters. To the Mexico City Attorney General's Office, near the downtown district. She keeps quiet for a moment now, paying close attention. About two weeks ago, I tell her, on another trip to the capital city, I met up with John Gibler, the journalist who helped me start the process of finding my sister's file. She looks down, and then I know for a fact that she knows. And understands. After a brief search in the newspaper archives, I continue, John found the news just as it was published in La Prensa twenty-nine years ago. He managed to contact Tomás Rojas Madrid, the journalist who wrote the four articles that documented the murder of a twenty-year-old architecture student in a surprisingly restrained tone, in language devoid of emotion or sensationalism, succinctly depicting the crime that had alarmed a neighborhood in Azcapotzalco on July 16, 1990. And I came, I continue explaining, to meet the two of them, the two journalists, at the Havana Café, that famed and crowded place, and walked with them to the building of the Mexico City Attorney General's Office. Because I wanted to file a petition there, I tell her. How does one even formula...
Azcapotzalco
Time heals everything, except wounds. -Chris Marker, Sans Soleil
[here, under this branch, you can speak of love]
The tree is brimming with invisible birds. At first I think it must be an elm tree-it has the same sturdy and solitary trunk supporting the sprawling branches that I recognize from my childhood-but soon, just a couple days later, it is clear that it is an aspen, a foreign species transplanted long ago to this part of Mexico City, an area poor in native vegetation. We sit beneath it, right on the edge of a yellow curb. The sun slowly setting. Across the busy street and behind tall metal gates, gray factory towers stretch upward, and heavy power lines bend, barely horizontal, against the sky. Trailers drive by at great speed, as do taxis and cars. Bicycles. Of all the evening noises, the sound of birds is the most unexpected. I have the impression that if we move beyond the tree's shadow we will not be able to hear them anymore. Here, under this branch, you can speak of love.// Beyond lies the law, the need, / the trail of force, the preserve of terror./ The fief of punishment. // Beyond here, no. But we listen to them and in some absurd, perhaps unreasonable, way their repetitive and insistent singing triggers a calm that cannot erase disbelief. Do you think she will come? I ask Sorais as she lights a cigarette. The lawyer? Yes, she. I have never known what to call that movement, when lips pressed together stretch toward one side of the face, dismissing any illusion of symmetry. I'm sure we'll see her soon, she says in response, spitting out a strand of tobacco. In any case, it wouldn't hurt to wait another half hour. Or another hour. Looking at her sideways, hesitantly, I have to admit to myself that I mentioned the lawyer because I wanted to avoid asking her to wait with me. Supplicate is the verb. I did not want to beg. I did not want to beg you to wait here with me for a little longer because I don't know if I will be able to, Sorais. Because I don't know what animal I am unleashing deep within. We are now six hours and twenty minutes into a journey that started at noon, in what now seems to have been another city, another geological era, another planet.
[twenty-nine years, three months, two days]
We'd agreed to meet at noon at the place where I was staying. An old house turned into a boutique hotel. A white fence flanked by bougainvillea and vines. An old gravel passageway. Palm trees. Rose bushes. And while I wait for Sorais with some anticipation, I don't take my eyes off the city on the other side of the windows. It welcomes just about everyone, this city. It kills just about anyone too. Lavish and unhealthy at the same time, cumulative, overwhelming. Adjectives are never enough. When Sorais arrives at the house that is to be my home those few autumn days in Mexico City, I don't know if I will be able to.
There are two things I must do today, I tell her right away as we hug and exchange greetings. The aroma of soap in her hair. The moisture of her skin after a hot bath. Her voice, which I have known for years. Well let's go then, she answers immediately, without even asking for more details. It might take all day, I warn her. And it is then that she pauses, looking into my eyes. So where are we going? The intrigue in her voice betrays expectation, not suspicion. I am silent. Sometimes it takes a bit of silence for words to come together on the tip of the tongue and, once there, for them to jump, to take the unimaginable leap. This dive into unknown waters. To the Mexico City Attorney General's Office, near the downtown district. She keeps quiet for a moment now, paying close attention. About two weeks ago, I tell her, on another trip to the capital city, I met up with John Gibler, the journalist who helped me start the process of finding my sister's file. She looks down, and then I know for a fact that she knows. And understands. After a brief search in the newspaper archives, I continue, John found the news just as it was published in La Prensa twenty-nine years ago. He managed to contact Tomás Rojas Madrid, the journalist who wrote the four articles that documented the murder of a twenty-year-old architecture student in a surprisingly restrained tone, in language devoid of emotion or sensationalism, succinctly depicting the crime that had alarmed a neighborhood in Azcapotzalco on July 16, 1990. And I came, I continue explaining, to meet the two of them, the two journalists, at the Havana Café, that famed and crowded place, and walked with them to the building of the Mexico City Attorney General's Office. Because I wanted to file a petition there, I tell her. How does one even formula...
