LILIANA'S INVINCIBLE SUMMER

A true-crime book that creates a distressing portrayal of gendered violence in Mexico.

In her latest book, MacArthur fellow Rivera Garza, a professor of Hispanic studies and creative writing at the University of Houston, delivers a cleareyed portrait of her sister, who was murdered in Azcapotzalco, Mexico, on July 16, 1990. The author chronicles how she visited Mexico in 2019 in search of her sister’s unresolved criminal file, and she brings us into her world with accounts of Liliana’s summer, including letters, notebooks, and personal narratives from family and friends. In one brief passage, Rivera Garza provides revealing insight into the gender dynamics of her sister’s life. A friend recalls: “Lili wanted out of this relationship, but couldn’t. The guy was very persistent. She was, or seemed to be, going steady with Manolo, but Ángel still insisted that she was his girl­friend. I never witnessed any violence between them.” As the author shows, many of the men in Liliana’s orbit considered women mere possessions. The narrative is full of a wide variety of characters whose common tie is Liliana, and the author knits all of the stories together with aplomb. Her skilled storytelling movingly depicts the last days of her sister’s life within the context of the continued plague of femicide. “With the care of the archaeologist who touches without damaging, who dusts without breaking, my intention is to open and preserve [my sister’s writing] at the same time: de- and recon­textualize it in a reading from the present,” writes the author. “Neither Liliana nor those of us who loved her had at our disposal the insight, the lan­guage, that would allow us to identify the signs of danger. This blindness, which was never voluntary but social, has contributed to the murder of hundreds of thousands of women in Mexico and beyond.”

A moving, heart-wrenching memoir as well as an unflinching appraisal of the widespread violence against women in Mexico.