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Liliana's Invincible Summer (Pulitzer Prize winner): A Sister's Search for Justice Audiobook
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PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A searing account of grief and the quest to bring her sister’s murderer to justice years after the fact” (The Boston Globe), from “one of Mexico’s greatest living writers” (Jonathan Lethem).
“Part memoir, part true-crime story, Garza’s chronicle is both personal and political.”—The Washington Post
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, Chicago Public Library, She Reads, Electric Lit
October 18, 2019. Cristina Rivera Garza travels from her home in Texas to Mexico City, in search of an old, unresolved criminal file. “My name is Cristina Rivera Garza,” she writes in her request to the attorney general, “and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered on July 16, 1990.” It’s been twenty-nine years. Twenty-nine years, three months, and two days since Liliana was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend. Inspired by feminist movements across the world and enraged by the global epidemic of femicide and intimate partner violence, Cristina embarks on a path toward justice. Liliana’s Invincible Summer is the account—and the outcome—of that quest .
In luminous, poetic prose, Rivera Garza tells a singular yet universally resonant story: Liliana is a spirited, wondrously hopeful young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. Rivera Garza traces her sister’s history, depicting everything from Liliana’s early romance with a handsome but possessive and short-tempered man to that exhilarating final summer of 1990 when she loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before.
Using her skills as an acclaimed scholar, novelist, and poet, Rivera Garza collected and curated evidence—handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, interviews with Liliana’s loved ones—to document her sister’s life. Through this remarkable and genre-defying memoir, she confronts the trauma of losing her sister and examines how this tragedy continues to shape who she is—and what she fights for—today.
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"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
Quotes
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“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 -
“The record of a woman who, against the odds, refuses to be forgotten…Her book, part of a larger call for justice by women in Mexico, helped locate the suspect.”
— New York Times -
“Her main goal, however, is not abstract analysis of femicide but to chronicle a life lost to it.”
— The Economist -
“A moving, heart-wrenching memoir as well as an unflinching appraisal of the widespread violence against women in Mexico.”
— Kirkus 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 -
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
Awards
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Finalist for the National Book Award
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Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
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A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
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A Washington Post Best Books of the Year Pick
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A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best
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A Time Magazine Best Book of 2023
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An NPR Best Book of 2023
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An Electric Literature Pick of 2023's Best Books
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About Cristina Rivera Garza
Cristina Rivera Garza is the award-winning author of several books, including Liliana’s Invincible Summer, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Memoir. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize. She is the M. D. Anderson Distinguished Professor in Hispanic Studies and director of the PhD program in creative writing in Spanish at the University of Houston.
About Victoria Villarreal
Caitlin Kelly, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a seasoned voice-over artist with experience in Japan and the United States. She has a BFA in drama and studied musical theater at the Collaborative Arts Project 21, an off-Broadway theater company and musical theater training conservatory. She got started in voice-over work in 2009 while living in Japan where she toured with Disney’s World of English and World Family Club as a performer and a puppeteer.