In 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza, a twenty-year-old architecture student in Mexico City, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who was never punished. Cristina Rivera Garza, her sister, spent decades before she could write about it. She works from Liliana's letters, diaries, drawings, police files and notes, assembling the girl's last years and the legal failure that followed. She reflects on femicide, on the stories told about victims, and on how to write about someone who was lost without making her a symbol, using a mix of memoir and documentary.
It's a book for readers interested in gender violence, true-crime-adjacent nonfiction and writing as a form of mourning. Because the author is both witness and sister, it is intimate and painful, and it gives Liliana a voice of her own.
Inward-looking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Empathetic Explorer. Which reader are you?
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