Liliana's Invincible Summer

Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice

Author	Cristina Rivera Garza
Language	English and Spanish
Publisher	Penguin Random House
Publication date	2023
Publication place	United States/Mexico
ISBN	9780593244111

Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice (Published in Spanish as El invencible verano de Liliana) is a 2023 book by Cristina Rivera Garza, published by Penguin Random House. In the book, Rivera Garza paints a portrait of her sister, Liliana, who was murdered in 1990 Mexico by her boyfriend. The suspected murderer fled and was never brought to justice. Rivera Garza attempts to obtain the police files regarding the murder, interviews Liliana's friends, family members, and reads her letters and personal writings in order to depict her sister's life and her loss. The book also discusses the feminism movement in Mexico and intimate partner violence as a societal issue.

The book was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography.

Narrative

Rivera Garza travels to Mexico to attempt to document her sister Liliana's murder in 1990. Liliana was in university studying architecture and was a competitive swimmer when in 1990, at the age of 20, she was murdered by her boyfriend Angel Gonzalez Ramos. The suspected murderer fled and was never brought to justice. Rivera Garza speaks to Mexican police and attempts to review the case files regarding the murder, but these were not available, having been lost. Rivera interviews Liliana's father, her friends and reads her personal writings and letters to paint a personal portrait of her sister. Using modern scholarship and research, she uncovers the warning signs of intimate partner violence that were present in Liliana's life but that were not known to her or her loved ones in the 1990s. She explains how in the past, intimate partner violence was absolved in the past as "crimes of passion" or that perpetrators had "snapped".

Rivera Garza also discusses feminism in Mexico and how the movement has become galvanized, fighting for women's rights and bringing violence against women to the forefront.

Reception

Writing for The New York Times, Katherine Dykstra stated that by incorporating long, unedited interviews, long sections of letters, and preserving Liliana's voice in her own writing, it created for a challenging read as the reader is left to interpret these contemporary primary sources for semblances of meaning. However, Dykstra stated Rivera Garza was able to paint a vivid, intimate, sympathetic portrait of her sister.