A Sister’s Quest for Justice With Cristina Rivera Garza

Latino USA

Futuro Media and PRX

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Author Cristina Rivera Garza’s memoir received the Pulitzer prize in 2024. In Mexico, the book sparked a feminist movement demanding justice for gender-based violence. In “Liliana’s Invincible Summer,” Cristina delves into the “emotional archive” of her sister, who was allegedly killed by her boyfriend 30 years ago, when Liliana was only 20. In this conversation, Cristina Rivera Garza and Maria Hinojosa discuss their own journeys to find the words and power to talk about gender-based violence and femicide in both English and Spanish.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Dear listener, just a quick warning, we're going to be talking about rape and
0:10.8	femicide, so please take care.
0:13.7	Having access to this material was such a privilege and reached my view of my sister, of my family, of our times together,
0:25.2	of Lillianna's student, as a lover, as a friend. And that's another reason why I'm prone to say
0:30.8	when I talk about the book that this is not a writing that I did about Lilliana or on Lilliana.
0:37.2	This is a book that I authored with her.
0:40.4	This is a book written in sisterhood.
0:47.5	From Futuro Media and PRX, it's Latino USA. I'm Maria Inojosa. Today, a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning Mexican writer Christina Rivera-Garza
0:57.7	about finding the words to name gender-based crimes
1:01.6	and why it took her 30 years to write a memoir about her sister's murder. Christina Rivera Garza describes herself as a migrant writer. She was born in Matamoros,
1:26.5	on the Mexican side of the U.S. Mexico border, but for the last
1:30.5	30 years, she's lived in Houston, Texas. There she directs the PhD program in creative writing in
1:37.4	Spanish at the University of Houston, which is the first PhD program of its kind in the country.
1:46.0	Last year, Christina won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir for Liliana's Invincible Summer.
1:51.0	It's a deeply intimate book where Christina reconstructs the life of her younger and only sister Liliana,
1:59.0	who was allegedly killed by her ex-boyfriend when she was only 20 years old.
2:05.0	Her case was never solved, and the alleged perpetrator remains at large.
2:11.3	Her memoir is now receiving attention in the United States, but in Mexico, her book's impact went far beyond the page.
2:19.3	It sparked a movement demanding justice for Lillianna's murder and for the hundreds of cases
2:25.6	like hers that remain unprosecuted.
2:33.1	The Pulitzer isn't the first award Christina received.
2:38.9	In 2020, she got a MacArthur Genius grant, and that's when she began researching her memoir.
	...

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