Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and gender discrimination.



Cristina Rivera Garza is a Mexican writer and historian. She earned an undergraduate degree in sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a doctorate in history at the University of Houston. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Liliana’s Invincible Summer in 2024 in the category of memoir or autobiography. She has taught at various universities in Mexico and the United States and currently holds the M. D. Anderson Distinguished Professor in Hispanic Studies and serves as the director and founder of the creative writing program in Spanish at the University of Houston.

Rivera Garza began writing in her youth and published her first book, The War Doesn’t Matter, in 1991, shortly after Ángel Gonzales Ramos murdered her sister, Liliana. The unpublished manuscript won the San Luis Potosí National Short Story Award, an accomplishment woven into the narrative of her memoir as she recollects Liliana’s presence in the text: “When, two years later, the book launch was held at El Cuervo, a bar in the center of the Coyocán district in the south of the city [Mexico City], Liliana was not there. Liliana lived, however, inside the book’s pages” (108). Rivera Garza’s sense that Liliana contributed substantially to her first manuscript illustrates the depth of the sisters’ bond, which drives her pursuit of Bearing Witness as Activism in Liliana’s Invincible Summer.

Rivera Garza’s skills as a writer and historian position her to investigate her sister’s life as she applies her critical and creative eye to Liliana’s copious archives, meticulously recreating the story of her life from her teenage years to her time in Mexico City as a university student—in particular, Liliana’s abusive relationship with Ángel. She transcribes Liliana’s words, allowing her to speak for herself rather than appear as Ángel’s passive victim. She also excerpts oral history interviews with Liliana’s circle of friends and some family members, including her parents. This method allows Rivera Garza to fill in gaps left by Liliana’s writings and vice versa. Through such characterization, her sister takes shape as an independent and loving woman who valued freedom while craving close and loving relationships. 

Rivera Garza writes that she is never alone because she continues to grieve for her sister. Her book brings Liliana back to life while highlighting the long-term effects of femicide on families who experience this violence. Her work gives voice to the myriad victims of intimate partner violence who are often blamed for supposedly encouraging men’s negative attention. She provides an impassioned defense of her sister alongside a condemnation of Mexico’s justice system, which allowed her sister’s killer to evade prosecution.