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ourviolentends's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
booksnpunks's review against another edition
3.0
In this essay collection, Garza opens with a really powerful statement on what it means to grieve and the relationship between grieving and writing. She discusses how grieving is an active thing which never stops happening but that through writing we constantly live through and learn to live with, and writing is one of the ways of moving through this grief.
Garza lost her sister to a horrific femicide and this collection discusses the tragic epidemic of women losing their lives to murder in Mexico. It moves through the topic with a variety of lenses, using different case studies and giving a brief summary of the Mexican political system and background.
I found some of the essays quite tough to get through and I think it was to do with Garza’s writing. As a lot of the essays are really short a lot of the information is crammed in and given to you quite intensely and so it’s a read you need to concentrate on at all times which is what took me a while to get used to and why I wouldn’t really say I enjoyed the essays, but found them absolutely invaluable nevertheless. I did however really enjoy the poems which bookended the collection and the last essay that discussed the pandemic was absolutely incredible. The bits about how the city is designed to be moved through in a vehicle and how hard it is to walk around a city but the pandemic brought back a sense of the wanderer to urban life is so fascinating.
Having a good time discovering Garza and will be reading another non-fiction and fiction book from her very soon.
Garza lost her sister to a horrific femicide and this collection discusses the tragic epidemic of women losing their lives to murder in Mexico. It moves through the topic with a variety of lenses, using different case studies and giving a brief summary of the Mexican political system and background.
I found some of the essays quite tough to get through and I think it was to do with Garza’s writing. As a lot of the essays are really short a lot of the information is crammed in and given to you quite intensely and so it’s a read you need to concentrate on at all times which is what took me a while to get used to and why I wouldn’t really say I enjoyed the essays, but found them absolutely invaluable nevertheless. I did however really enjoy the poems which bookended the collection and the last essay that discussed the pandemic was absolutely incredible. The bits about how the city is designed to be moved through in a vehicle and how hard it is to walk around a city but the pandemic brought back a sense of the wanderer to urban life is so fascinating.
Having a good time discovering Garza and will be reading another non-fiction and fiction book from her very soon.
danielles_reads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.5
I have mixed feelings on this one. This is essentially a collection of essays, and some of them were a lot stronger than others for me. The writing style is very poetic, lyrical, and abstract (kudos to the translator and audiobook narrator, who both did a great job!), which worked for some topics and not others. Some of the essays were so abstract that I couldn't understand what the author was really getting at (she would say "and that is the question" and I would be like, "wait, what question?"). Since one thesis of this book is the power of writing, I think Rivera Garza was more focused on the therapeutic aspect of writing, both for herself as the author and for the Mexican readers experiencing this horror, as opposed to directly informing people outside of Mexico. So knowing a decent amount of Mexican history from the late 1800s to early 1900s, thanks to the book Bad Mexicans, helped me a little bit by giving me some context that wasn't explictly provided in this book. Though I also feel like audio might not have been the best way to consume this content.
In the near future I plan to go through the lines I bookmarked in order to list the essays I resonated with the most.
In the near future I plan to go through the lines I bookmarked in order to list the essays I resonated with the most.
lene_kretzsch's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.75
jbosio's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence
Minor: Rape
readingwithcoffee's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
4.0
The narrator for the audio book is bit a fast and I think the material would be best absorbed visually but still a lot to think about and I really appreciated this introduction to Rivera’s work
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Sexual violence, Police brutality, Grief, Deportation, Trafficking, Mass/school shootings, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Violence, War, Torture, Genocide, Death, and Classism