In 'Death Takes Me,' men are the victims of violence usually inflicted on women

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

La muerte me da, a novel published in Spanish in 2007 by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cristina Rivera Garza, is now available to English readers. Death Takes Me follows a woman detective who finds herself in charge of handling a series of cases involving the killings of men – all of whom have been sexually mutilated. In today's episode, Garza speaks with NPR's A Martinez about the reality of gruesome violence against women in Mexico that inspired her book. She also talks about the power of words, and how she considers the grammar of violence in her writing.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. In comic book fandom and other
0:07.0	related circles, there's this term called Women in Refrigerators. It refers to the
0:12.3	trope of using a woman's gruesome death as a plot device to drive the male main character
0:18.1	forward. This idea is something the novelist, Christina Rivera Garza, upends in her novel, La Muerta
0:24.3	Me Da.
0:25.3	Now, that book was written in 2007, but she's since translated it with the title,
0:30.6	Death Takes Me.
0:31.8	So now it's available in English for the first time.
0:34.6	She talks to Amper's A. Martine is about revisiting a work more than a decade later
0:39.2	and thinking about what has changed and what hasn't. That's ahead.
0:46.0	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky
0:52.2	conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show,
0:56.3	Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:01.1	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on
1:06.5	the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Books by Mexican author and Professor Christina Rivera-Garza tended to buy expectation and genre.
1:16.7	In 2020, Rivera-Garza was named a MacArthur Genius Fellow.
1:20.4	Four years later, in 2024, her book, Lillianna's Invincible Summer, won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography.
1:27.4	Her latest is a translation of the
1:29.5	2007 novel La Mueira-Dade, or Death Takes Me Da. Christina Rivera-Garza joined us to talk about this novel,
1:36.4	the work of translation, and the power of words. So, Christina, tell us about the storyline in La Muete
1:42.5	Me Da, now called Death Takes Me. What's the storyline about?
1:46.3	Well, this is apparently a simple question. And yet, since this novel is veering away from a plot-based narrative, it may be a bit complicated.
	...

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