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Liliana's Invincible Summer
- A Sister's Search for Justice
- Narrated by: Victoria Villarreal
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
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Summary
A 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE
‘Meticulously written and deeply moving . . . A triumph’ JACKIE KAY
‘Absorbing and poetic’ ECONOMIST
‘Full of tenderness and beauty’ MARIANA ENRIQUEZ
From one of Mexico’s greatest contemporary writers, an astonishing work of non-fiction that illuminates an epidemic of femicide in Mexico through the death of one woman.
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.
On the dawn of 16 July 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza, Cristina Rivera Garza’s sister, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend and subsumed into Mexico's dark and relentless history of femicide. She was a twenty-year-old architecture student who had been trying for years to end her relationship with a high school boyfriend who insisted on not letting her go. A few weeks before the tragedy, Liliana made a definitive decision: at the height of her winter she had discovered that, as Albert Camus had said, there was an invincible summer in her. She would leave him behind. She would start a new life. She would do a master's degree and a doctorate; she would travel to London. But his decision was that she would not have a life without him. Returning to Mexico after decades of living in the United States, Cristina Rivera Garza collects and curates evidence – handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, voice recordings and architectural blueprints – to defy a pattern of increasingly normalised, gendered violence and understand the life lost. What she finds is Liliana: her sister’s voice crossing time and, like that of so many disappeared and outraged women in Mexico, demanding justice.
What listeners say about Liliana's Invincible Summer
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- Caroline
- 23-06-24
Tragic story but wider context would have been interesting
This is a really sad story of the murder of the author's sister, Liliana, by her ex-partner which very sensitively details what is known of her, especially her last few months and her relationship with her ex partner and desire to break away from his controlling behaviour. It's a very moving book.
However, whilst the author makes the point about femicide being a result of attitudes throughout society that, until recently, weren't understood or taken seriously, I didn't feel that there was enough focus on that e.g. whether there was any progress in tackling femicide or what strategies governments can take to reduce it.
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- Amazon Customer
- 18-11-23
Required reading
This is one of many stories of the brutal act of femicide. It’s a sisters telling of a brutal crime and her sister’s, Liliana, attempt to escape a cycle of abuse. This book starts with bureaucracy of just trying to find information and becomes a retelling of her sisters short life. Read this book it’s both informative and heartbreaking.
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- Anonymous User
- 21-12-23
uncommonly moving, unbelievably important
incredible writing and great audio reading. I'm usually a lover of detail heavy, data heavy non fiction, especially about issues of social justice, feminism, social violence, and trauma. But this intimate portage of Liliana, the author's sister, bears the brutal consequences of her gender.
The establishment of feminicide in Mexico City as a frighteningly common statistic builds the walls of this book; Rivera Garza fills these walls with as much of Liliana as can be put in the pages of a book. Her tics, her loves, her passions, her attitudes, her vivality. An incredible book; an incredibly brave endeavor for Rivera Garza to embark on. I wept reading it.
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- Steph 17
- 05-05-24
Not really my thing
I thought this book would be really interesting and touch on what is an important topic. Instead I found it very boring. Never followed the thread it started with, didn’t answer any questions. Granted I persevered through three quarters of the book. I found it a real slog and gave up in the end. Maybe someone’s cup of tea but sadly not for me.
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