Grieving: dispatches from a wounded country
Description
Finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics’ Circle Award for Criticism
By one of Mexico's greatest contemporary writers, this investigation into state violence and mourning gives voice to the political experience of collective pain.
Grieving is a hybrid collection of short crónicas, journalism, and personal essays on systemic violence in contemporary Mexico and along the US-Mexico border. Drawing together literary theory and historical analysis, she outlines how neoliberalism, corruption, and drug trafficking—culminating in the misnamed “war on drugs”—has shaped her country. Working from and against this political context, Cristina Rivera Garza posits that collective grief is an act of resistance against state violence, and that writing is a powerful mode of seeking social justice and embodying resilience.
She states: “As we write, as we work with language—the humblest and most powerful force available to us—we activate the potential of words, phrases, sentences. Writing as we grieve, grieving as we write: a practice able to create refuge from the open. Writing with others. Grieving like someone who takes refuge from the open. Grieving, which is always a radically different mode of writing.”
“A lucid, poignant collection of essays and poetry. . . . deeply hopeful, ultimately love letters to writing itself, and to the power of language to overcome the silence that impunity imposes.” —New York Times Book Review
"For all the losses tallied, the pieces are imbued with optimism and an activist’s passion for reshaping the world." —The New Yorker
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9781936932948
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Published Reviews
Booklist Review
Mexican writer and multidisciplinary professor Rivera Garza explores the nuances of horror, violence, and injustice in Mexico's recent history. Through poetry, journalism, and essays, Rivera Garza invites readers into the lives of people who have been wounded by systemic violence. She examines the pervasive murders of women and the uprising of feminist activism in Mexico's 2019 #MeToo-related movements, #RopaSucia and #MiPrimerAcoso. Details of massacres are woven throughout the book, reminders of the lives lost to organized crime and government-sponsored violence in the "war on drugs." Engaging with philosophy and economic theory, Rivera Garza highlights interactions along the U.S.-Mexican border and the continued U.S. reliance on Mexican labor. Essays include discussion of how the current COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inequality of modern society. Rivera Garza's remarkable writing captures a sense of place through evocative imagery and detail. Her incisive look at Mexico's national grief emphasizes the humanity and struggle of daily life there. Highlighting activists and social movements, Grieving is a thought-provoking, moving analysis of social and political reckoning in Mexico.
Kirkus Book Review
Pensive meditation on the violence in Mexico that has compelled so many to seek refuge north of the border. "What we Mexicans have been forced to witness at the beginning of the twenty-first century--on the streets, on pedestrian bridges, on television, or in the papers--is, without a doubt, one of the most chilling spectacles of contemporary horror," writes Rivera Garza, a poet, critic, translator, and professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. That spectacle includes the mass murder of women in border cities, drug-fueled violence throughout the country, politically motivated killings, and smaller, less systematic incidents, including the femicide of her sister. "Soon after she was pronounced dead," writes the author, "the Mexico City police had gathered enough evidence to issue a warrant of arrest against…an ex-boyfriend who never stopped stalking and threaten-ing her, and who, to this day, has not paid for his crime….The war, this variously named war that still tears us apart, began, for me, on that date. Grieving, too, began its long, mercurial, transformative work." In the face of all this bloodshed, former president Vicente Fox muttered, "Why should I care?" Fox has protection, money, and a walled estate, shields that most Mexicans do not enjoy. For all that, writes the author, everyone should care: "The dead are mine and they are yours." Regrettably, few seem to, leading to the damaging trope that Mexicans are so often seen as "inadequate, passive, or fatalist victims." As Rivera Garza ably demonstrates, so much of the responsibility for the violence can be attributed to the failure of the state. In the end, the slow collapse of civil society amounts to less a revolution than a "structural change" whose consequences are not yet known and "for which a vocabulary to comprehend it does not yet exist." A compelling work of social criticism that speaks to a desperate time. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Reviews
Mexican writer and multidisciplinary professor Rivera Garza explores the nuances of horror, violence, and injustice in Mexico's recent history. Through poetry, journalism, and essays, Rivera Garza invites readers into the lives of people who have been wounded by systemic violence. She examines the pervasive murders of women and the uprising of feminist activism in Mexico's 2019 #MeToo-related movements, #RopaSucia and #MiPrimerAcoso. Details of massacres are woven throughout the book, reminders of the lives lost to organized crime and government-sponsored violence in the "war on drugs." Engaging with philosophy and economic theory, Rivera Garza highlights interactions along the U.S.-Mexican border and the continued U.S. reliance on Mexican labor. Essays include discussion of how the current COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inequality of modern society. Rivera Garza's remarkable writing captures a sense of place through evocative imagery and detail. Her incisive look at Mexico's national grief emphasizes the humanity and struggle of daily life there. Highlighting activists and social movements, Grieving is a thought-provoking, moving analysis of social and political reckoning in Mexico. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.