Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice, by Cristina Rivera Garza

On July 16, 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza, my sister, was a victim of femicide. She was a 20-year-old architecture student. She had spent years trying to end her relationship with a high school boyfriend who insisted on not letting her go. Just a few weeks before the tragedy, Liliana finally made a definitive decision: in the depths of winter, she had discovered that within her—as Albert Camus famously put it—lay an invincible summer. She would leave him behind. She would start a new life. She would pursue a master’s degree and then a doctorate; she would travel to London. His decision was that she would have no life without him.

Barely a year ago, I decided to open the boxes where we had placed my sister’s belongings. Her voice reached across time and, like that of so many disappeared and outraged women in Mexico, demanded justice. Liliana’s Invincible Summer is an excavation into the life of a brilliant and bold woman who lacked—as we did, as everyone else did—the necessary language to identify, denounce, and fight against the sexist violence and partner terrorism that characterizes so many patriarchal relationships.

This book is to celebrate her time on earth and to tell her that, yes, we will bring it down. The patriarchy—we are going to bring it down.

Cristina Rivera Garza

Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice, by Cristina Rivera Garza

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