Finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics’ Circle Award for Criticism By one of Mexico's greatest contemporary writers, this investigation into state violence and mourning gives voice to the political experience of collective pain. Grieving is a hybrid collection of short crónicas, journalism, and personal essays on systemic violence in contemporary Mexico and along the US-Mexico border. Drawing together literary theory and historical analysis, she outlines how neoliberalism, corruption, and drug trafficking—culminating in the misnamed “war on drugs”—has shaped her country. 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. 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.” “A lucid, poignant collection of essays and poetry. . . . deeply hopeful, ultimately love letters to writing itself, and to the power of language to overcome the silence that impunity imposes.” — New York Times Book Review "For all the losses tallied, the pieces are imbued with optimism and an activist’s passion for reshaping the world." — The New Yorker “A lucid, poignant collection of essays and poetry. . . . deeply hopeful, ultimately love letters to writing itself, and to the power of language to overcome the silence that impunity imposes.” — New York Times Book Review “For all the losses tallied, the pieces are imbued with optimism and an activist’s passion for reshaping the world.” — The New Yorker “A compelling work of social criticism that speaks to a desperate time.” —Kirkus Reviews “If the continuation of violence depends on silence and impunity, Rivera Garza believes that writing can throw a wrench in that machine. . . . Rather than capitulate, Rivera Garza’s work demands that we see this violence for what it is. Use language to name it, to see it, to speak to it, and then to do something about it.” — The Nation “ Grieving is a riveting collection of essays. . . . the book succeeds in shedding light on the dynamics of state power, patriarchy, and violence, allowing femicide to exist and the counterresponse ‘tragic agency’ to emerge.” — Latino Book Review “A concise but weighty and timely collection of essays and dispatches.” — Washington Post Book Review “Evocative and informative.” — Words Without Borders “Rivera Garza applies a lingual scalpel to the narrative of systemic violence: a narrative enacted on both sides of the border by governments, law enforcement, drug cartels, and the media who sensationalize, erase, or ignore the violence.” — Brooklyn Rail “A powerful, heartbreaking chronicle of the violence that's taken place in Mexico along the U.S.-Mexico border. . . . not only a book of mourning and loss, but one of vitality, of love, and of hope for a changed future.” —Refinery29 “Rivera Garza's remarkable writing captures a sense of place through evocative imagery and detail. Her incisive look at Mexico’s national grief emphasizes the humanity and struggle of daily life there. Highlighting activists and social movements, Grieving is a thought-provoking, moving analysis of social and political reckoning in Mexico.” — Booklist “ Grieving is simultaneously a testament, a manifesto, and a living embodiment of its own call to action.” — Women's Review of Books “[ Grieving ] is a new texture, a different, completely ethical reading contract produced by means of slowness, evincing a corporate, capitalist, neoliberal political system that bet on monetary profit rather than our bodies. These fragments take on a life of their own in this book. They are reorganized in the form of a map, a new reality in which we all exist.” — Latin American Literature Today “Sobering and wise and beautiful.” — Book Riot “To read Rivera Garza's work is to experience a visceral relationship with the written word.” —Sightlines “Elegant and scathing. . . . [Rivera Garza] writes about the power of the collective voicing of misogynistic acts, and it is here that we find the courage and hope—not from politicians or the legal system, but in the voices of everyday people refusing to be silenced.” — Mom Egg Review “Finally this urgent manifesto on how we gaze upon trauma is available in translation. Cristina Rivera Garza’s Grieving was an early major reckoning with violence in contemporary Mexico, but its relevance, like the causes of the crisis, extends far beyond the border. Like one of its forebears, Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others , it approaches violence not as mere intellectual exercise but with