Cristina Rivera Garza | The Common Grave of the Poor: An Exhumation of "Autobiography of Cotton"

ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER

Cristina Rivera Garza is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Chair and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston. A writer, historian, critic, and scholar, Rivera Garza is one of the most influential voices in contemporary Latin American and Latino literature. Her work moves across fiction, nonfiction, memoir, poetry, literary criticism, archival research, and experimental writing, consistently expanding the possibilities of literary form in Spanish and English.

Rivera Garza is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice, the English-language version of El invencible verano de Liliana. The book won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Memoir or Autobiography and was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award in Nonfiction. Written from family archives, letters, notebooks, institutional documents, and personal memory, Liliana’s Invincible Summer reconstructs the life of her sister Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered in Mexico City in 1990. The book has become a major contribution to contemporary conversations about gender violence, justice, mourning, and the political force of memory.

The talk will be followed by a conversation with historian Ada Ferrer, Princeton University.

This event is co-organized with the Princeton University Press.

Co-sponsored by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), Humanities Council, Lewis Center for the Arts, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.