Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner)

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

“Not everything can be put into words, especially grief and rage, no matter how precise and skilled the writing is. The beauty of this book is that it reaches for that truth regardless, and in doing so, Liliana becomes indelible. She is so fully realized that by the end, the reader is also mourning. I will be thinking of Liliana for a very long time, perhaps forever.”—The Washington Post

“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. . . . Absorbing and poetic.”—The Economist

“A searing account of grief and the quest to bring her sister’s murderer to justice years after the fact . . . Reminiscent of Natasha Trethewey’s “Memorial Drive,” Rivera Garza’s memoir is both master stroke and a critical inflection point in her country’s brutal, patriarchal politics.”—The Boston Globe

“The Mexican virtuoso’s searing, propulsive memoir probes the murder of her younger sister . .  . Rivera Garza recreates Liliana’s death at the hands of a violent ex-boyfriend, opening a Pandora’s box of bureaucratic demons and igniting a cold case that rallied a nation to the cause of domestic abuse.”—Oprah Daily
 
“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

“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 Expand reviews