Finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics' Circle Award for
Criticism
By one of Mexico's greatest contemporary writers, this investigation
into state violence and mourning gives voice to the political
experience of collective pain.
Grieving is a hybrid collection of short crónicas, journalism, and
personal essays on systemic violence in contemporary Mexico and along
the US-Mexico border. Drawing together literary theory and historical
analysis, she outlines how neoliberalism, corruption, and drug
trafficking--culminating in the misnamed "war on drugs"--has shaped her
country. Working from and against this political context, Cristina
Rivera Garza posits that collective grief is an act of resistance
against state violence, and that writing is a powerful mode of seeking
social justice and embodying resilience.
She states: "As we write, as we work with language--the humblest and
most powerful force available to us--we activate the potential of words,
phrases, sentences. Writing as we grieve, grieving as we write: a
practice able to create refuge from the open. Writing with others.
Grieving like someone who takes refuge from the open. Grieving, which is
always a radically different mode of writing."
"A lucid, poignant collection of essays and poetry. . . . deeply
hopeful, ultimately love letters to writing itself, and to the power of
language to overcome the silence that impunity imposes." --New York
Times Book Review
For all the losses tallied, the pieces are imbued with optimism and an
activist's passion for reshaping the world. --The New Yorker
