Cristina Rivera Garza (Mexico, 1964) arrives at the interview somewhat late, but it is not her fault, but Pamplona’s. Sitting at a table in the cities of northern Spain is quite an experience: the service is not as rushed as the capital (fortunately), the food is copious, the after-meals last long… And on top of that, the conversation was very pleasant! , he excuses himself. Rivera Garza has shared a table with other participants in the Pamplona Meetings, who have brought her from Houston to talk about “the uncertain place of literature.” He doesn’t want to miss this afternoon’s conference, so we go directly to the conference center. He just won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoirs for ‘The Invincible Summer of Liliana’ (Random House Literature), his latest book, in which he recounts the circumstances surrounding the murder of his sister. He has finally been able to write it, after two failed attempts from fiction, because now he does have the language (and the audience) for this type of stories.—Why do you insist so much in the book on the importance of language?—Yes We do not have language, we cannot identify the damage and we cannot articulate a criticism either. In 1990, on July 16, 1990, when my sister was the victim of a feminicide, the word feminicide did not exist, and violence between men and women was described using the narrative of the crime of passion, which essentially blames the victim and exonerates the victim. perpetrator. It was very difficult for me to be able to tell this story, because telling it meant blaming all of us: my sister, her family, her friends, her community… There was a process of forced silencing, which is also a form of violence. I was finally able to tell this story all these years later because there has been a lot of collective work with the language. —Is reality transformed by rewriting language? Is it part of the cultural battle?—Language is powerful. We are social beings, we build ourselves from narratives, from how we tell ourselves through language. There is nothing we do not do without language and that is why I believe that the discussions we have, about inclusive language for example, are bloody battles because we are not dealing with something superficial, we are dealing with how we say ourselves, with how we know each other and with how we act.’The invincible summer of Liliana’ Author Cristina Rivera Garza Publisher Literature Random House Number of pages 18.90 euros Price 304—Is your book managing to change something?—It would be very It is presumptuous to say that writing can change the world, in general. But I believe that all general change begins with small daily transformations. That is where writing affects, because writing is not disconnected from the world in which we are. And writing, when it reverberates, is because it has been able to articulate itself not only to contemporary concerns, but to a certain sense of contemporary language. That is where its great power lies and it continues to have it. Liliana’s book has had a series of repercussions that I did not expect. That’s also the beautiful thing about books, that they end up doing whatever they want, regardless of what you want. The book has been transformed into murals, into works, into artistic interventions, into banners, into marches… all these types of things tell me that there is a capacity of the book to unfold and be something else, as long as the readers decide.—Do you think you have managed to do justice with the book?—I don’t, because we don’t do justice individually. And one of my great regrets is that we have not been able to arrest Ángel González Ramos, for whom an arrest warrant is pending. But the truth is that there is a form of restorative justice that has to do with collective memory and the truth. That which is done in community, collectively. I think it is something that has been achieved between the readers and the book, bringing Liliana up, remembering her name, her version of events and her truth. «Liliana’s book has had a series of repercussions that I did not expect. Books do whatever they want”—Should one write from a place of commitment?—For me, writing is a field of criticism, a field of questioning and, if possible, of subversion of these narratives that reach us, that seem natural and eternal. I think a lot of what I see myself doing is participating in this continuous awakening of language, putting my finger on the i’s, so to speak.—Have you found that nonfiction is more flexible for telling these types of stories?— I recently discussed with my students in the seminar I am teaching at the University of Houston the moment of the postfictional novel, that is, a story that embraces strategies of fiction and strategies of nonfiction, arguing that the difference between the two is purely circumstantial. In Liliana’s book I have used many historical research techniques, I have done interviews like journalists, I have investigated in archives… I have used as many strategies as I know, in such a way that this allowed me to approach it in a way complex to complex materials. I believe that if we pay attention to what our materials demand of us, we will always make ‘cross-genre’ books, we will always have to cross these strict notions of genre that we owe to the 19th century. They have described the book as a novel, and as a novel we could say that it is a non-fiction novel. It has been described as a nonfiction book, but many of the strategies I use to describe specific scenes come directly from fiction. And I am comfortable with being called a book in which I am inviting readers to go through an experience. If I got that, let them call it whatever they want, that’s fine. I trust a lot in the intelligence and complexity of the readers. And I think that if the experience you propose is one that is calling to all their senses, there is a possibility that they will go with you. «Writing is a field of criticism and, if possible, of subversion of these narratives that seem eternal»— Do you always document so much for your books?—There is a question that is sometimes answered in identity terms: What do you have the right to talk about? What do you have the right to write about? It doesn’t seem like a useless question to me. Thinking about it a lot, my answer has been: you have the right to write what you have cared for. And an investigation is a way of caring. Research, apart, has the great virtue that it slows down, makes a process slow. It gives you time to consider many things. Capitalism has the great capacity to absorb and instrumentalize any critical strategy, and it also has the speed of recycling everything and turning it into an object of commerce. And in the face of capitalist speed we have this slowness. Slowness is this: it is research, it is taking your time with each document… That is why I believe that research is relevant, not only for non-fiction, but also for fiction.—Does a writer necessarily have to be egomaniacal? —Oh, no, please! How awful! I believe in another type of writing. I believe that for many years the idea that we have had of the writer, in masculine terms, with those photos of him who is looking into immensity to transcend into eternity. Many of those things have been critically reviewed. The change in the status of literature has implied a type of writer who comes from different classes and who fulfills a lot of functions and jobs in the world in which we live. It makes that writer who is full of himself and who is only propagating opinions less credible and desirable. —I ask you the question because you have written a very personal book. —All worthwhile books are personal books, which does not mean that they are books that start from individuality. In my case, I have been very critical against certain forms of autofiction that are based on this neoliberal notion of the individual. In my book I work from very contrary notions. The self does not make itself, the self is crossed by others. Hence I need interviews with my sister’s friends, with family, with her context, the city, etc. That is, there is a possibility of approaching what is deeply personal without having to go beyond or radically question the individual. That is to say, there are collective and dynamic ways of being able to address the personal without having to reach this neoliberal, masculinist I could say, patriarchal in many cases, issue of the individual. «You have the right to write what you have taken care of. And research is a way of caring”—When does a writer get old?—When we continue doing exactly the same thing. Michael Pollan analyzes in a book what hallucinogenic mushrooms do. He says that our brain is like a snowy surface where the steps of the skis are marked, and when you want to do something you always do the same thing, you go along the paths that the skis already mark the most. Mushrooms shed a fresh layer of snow to find new ways to travel the same path. Art and writing help us put on that fresh layer to be able to travel other paths, and as long as we do so, I believe we will not age. Our backs are going to hurt, we are going to have all kinds of ailments, but I care a lot about this ability to not do the same thing.—How do you write again after winning a Pulitzer?—I told my students recently that one of the virtues of what we are doing is that if you are really working on a new book, you are starting from scratch. If you don’t want to repeat yourself, you are forced to think about new paths, and there you have to radically unlearn. I’m in that position right now. What do I have to unlearn? What other paths can I find there? That way maybe you’ll avoid getting old, who knows.
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