Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country - Cristina Rivera Garza, Sarah Booker (Translator)

Written by Cristina Rivera Garza, Sarah Booker (Translator)
Read by Marisa Blake
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

This hybrid collection of short crónicas, journalism, and personal essays on systemic violence in contemporary Mexico and along the US-Mexico border draws together literary theory and historical analysis to outline how neoliberalism, corruption, and drug trafficking - culminating in the misnamed “war on drugs” - has shaped Mexico.

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. As 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.”

Length: 5 hrs
Release date: 03-09-21