Dear listener, just a quick warning, we're going to be talking about rape and

femicide, so please take care.

Having access to this material was such a privilege and reached my view of my sister, of my family, of our times together,

of Lillianna's student, as a lover, as a friend. And that's another reason why I'm prone to say

when I talk about the book that this is not a writing that I did about Lilliana or on Lilliana.

This is a book that I authored with her.

This is a book written in sisterhood.

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

about finding the words to name gender-based crimes

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,

on the Mexican side of the U.S. Mexico border, but for the last

30 years, she's lived in Houston, Texas. There she directs the PhD program in creative writing in

Spanish at the University of Houston, which is the first PhD program of its kind in the country.

Last year, Christina won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir for Liliana's Invincible Summer.

It's a deeply intimate book where Christina reconstructs the life of her younger and only sister Liliana,

who was allegedly killed by her ex-boyfriend when she was only 20 years old.

Her case was never solved, and the alleged perpetrator remains at large.

Her memoir is now receiving attention in the United States, but in Mexico, her book's impact went far beyond the page.

It sparked a movement demanding justice for Lillianna's murder and for the hundreds of cases

like hers that remain unprosecuted.

The Pulitzer isn't the first award Christina received.

In 2020, she got a MacArthur Genius grant, and that's when she began researching her memoir.

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