In 'Death Takes Me,' men are the victims of violence usually inflicted on women

Summary

NPR's Book of the Day: Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza

Episode Release Date: March 12, 2025
Host: Andrew Limbong
Author Featured: Cristina Rivera Garza

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Introduction

In this episode of NPR's Book of the Day, host Andrew Limbong delves into Cristina Rivera Garza's novel Death Takes Me, the English translation of her 2007 Spanish work, La Muerte Meda. The conversation explores how Garza challenges traditional gender narratives within violent contexts and the intricate process of translating her impactful storytelling.

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Upending Gender Tropes in Death Takes Me

Cristina Rivera Garza confronts the prevalent literary trope known as "women in refrigerators"—where female characters are harmed to advance male protagonists' stories. Garza subverts this by making men the primary victims of violence.

Cristina Rivera Garza (01:54): "There is a detective, a woman detective, who finds herself suddenly in charge of a very gruesome, enigmatic series of killings against men in a city that is plagued by violence."

Garza's decision to depict men as victims serves as a deliberate inversion of societal expectations around gender and vulnerability.

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The Context of Violence in Mexico

Garza writes against the backdrop of the ongoing violence related to the misnamed War on Drugs in Mexico, particularly the tragic murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez. By shifting the focus to male victims, she aims to provoke a deeper societal reflection on violence and its arbitrary targeting based on gender.

Cristina Rivera Garza (02:30): "We live in societies that have high tolerance for the suffering of women, and that has invited the perpetuation of violence against women to me. It was really important to swap these places to see that even though in Spanish the word victim is always feminine, it's la victima."

This thematic choice underscores the persistent issue of gendered violence and challenges listeners to reconsider their perceptions and reactions to such tragedies.

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Language as a Tool Against Violence

Garza emphasizes the profound impact of language in shaping societal attitudes toward violence. She argues that the very grammar and terminology we use can either perpetuate or mitigate the normalization of suffering.

Cristina Rivera Garza (04:19): "And that's another reason why I pay a lot of attention in this novel. I would say that the protagonist of this novel is language. As such, there is a grammar of violence."

By personifying language as the protagonist, Garza highlights its role in either enabling or resisting the cycles of violence within society.

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The Translation Process and Bilingualism

Translating La Muerte Meda into Death Takes Me involved more than a direct linguistic conversion; it was an introspective journey for Garza, reflecting on the enduring nature of violence and her evolving perspectives since the novel's original publication.

Cristina Rivera Garza (05:11): "I think it has something to say not only about what was happening in Mexico in 2007, but about what we are going through right now in 2025."

Garza collaborated with translators Sarah Booker and Robin Myers, ensuring that the novel's nuanced themes and linguistic intricacies were faithfully preserved and resonated with an English-speaking audience.

Additionally, Garza discusses her personal experience with bilingualism in her memoir, Liliana's Invincible Summer. She explains how alternating between English and Spanish served as an emotional buffer while grappling with her sister's tragic murder.

Cristina Rivera Garza (07:01): "I would follow that process and to see where it would take me. And so what I would do the next day was to use the opposite language to kind of revise what I had written the day before."

This bilingual approach underscores the therapeutic and transformative power of language, both in personal healing and literary expression.

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Conclusion

Cristina Rivera Garza's Death Takes Me is not merely a novel about violence but a profound commentary on gender, language, and societal indifference. By reversing traditional victimization tropes and delving into the mechanics of language, Garza invites readers to engage deeply with pressing social issues. The translation process further amplifies the novel's relevance, bridging cultural and linguistic divides to foster a broader understanding of the pervasive nature of violence.

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Notable Quotes:

• Cristina Rivera Garza (02:30): "We live in societies that have high tolerance for the suffering of women, and that has invited the perpetuation of violence against women to me."
• Cristina Rivera Garza (04:19): "The protagonist of this novel is language. As such, there is a grammar of violence."
• Cristina Rivera Garza (07:01): "I would follow that process and to see where it would take me."

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Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza is a compelling exploration of violence, gender, and language, making it a must-read for those interested in socially conscious literature that challenges the status quo.

Transcript

[Andrew Limbong]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. In comic book fandom and other related circles, there's this term called women in refrigerators. It refers to the trope of using a woman's gruesome death as a plot device to drive the male main character forward. This idea is something the novelist Cristina Rivera Garza upends in her novel La Muerta Meda. Now that book was written in 2007, but she's 16 since translated it with the title Death Takes Me. So now it's available in English for the first time. She talks to NPR's A. Martinez about revisiting a work more than a decade later and thinking about what has changed and what hasn't. That's ahead.

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[Cristina Rivera Garza]

Author and professor Cristina Rivera Garza tend to defy expectation and genre. In 2020, Rivera Garza was name named a MacArthur Genius Fellow. Four years later in 2024, her book Liliana's Invincible Summer won the Pulitzer Prize for memoir or autobiography. Her latest is a translation of the 2007 novel La Muerte Meda or Death Takes Me. Cristina Rivera Garza joined us to talk about this novel, the work of translation and the power of words. So Cristina, tell us about the storyline in La Muerte Meda, now called Death Takes Me. What's the storyline about?

Well, this is apparently a simple question and yet, since this novel is veering away from a plot based narrative, it may be a bit complicated. There is a detective, a woman detective, who finds herself suddenly in charge of a very gruesome, enigmatic series of killings against men in a city that is plagued by violence.

Why is it important that all the victims are men and actually in the story all the men are sexually mutilated. So why is that important in this case?

It has to do with the context in which I wrote this novel. I was living in Mexico for a while and as everybody else, I was being bombarded by news, news of Violence related to the misnamed War on Drugs. I had to confront, like everybody else in Mexico, daily grues, scenes of killings and murders, specifically about the killing of women, of poor young women, specifically located on the US Mexico border in Ciudad Juarez. And so I was trying to think through this violence to see what language could do against this violence. So I decided to make the male body the recipient of this violence in order to see if we could pay closer attention to.

Yeah, when things happen to men, all of a sudden men are worried. Men care when it's happening to them.

We live in societies that have high tolerance for the suffering of women, and that has invited the perpetuation of violence against women to me. It was really important to swap these places to see that even though in Spanish the word victim is always feminine, it's la victima. So what do we do when we're faced with this violence that is perpetrated specifically against men for sexual reasons? Right. My bet was that we would be paying a little bit more of attention. And I wanted that attention on the novel, but also on the reality that was causing that violence.

Yeah, I knew it before, Christina, but when you said it again that, yeah, in Spanish, victim is in the feminine victima, it just kind of blows me away that that's the default, right, in Spanish for victim.

Yeah. And that's another reason why I pay a lot of attention in this novel. I would say that the protagonist of this novel is language. As such, there is a grammar of violence. The way in which we speak, the way in which we name, has bearings on reality, has consequences. And thinking about the gender nature of both language and urban space was really important for me in the writing of the novel.

So tell us about that translation process, because I'm fascinated by this, Christina, in that the novel published in 2007. How often since 2007 did you think about the book? Because, you know, writers, artists, I think, sometimes have trouble letting go of their work because they feel maybe it's never finished the way exactly they want it to finish. So when you were thinking about translating, did you think, well, maybe I could tweak this, add this, subtract this?

I have done that with other books, by the way, in this case, since the context hasn't varied much. I mean, violence continues to be a feature of daily life both in Mexico and. And the Americas in general. So I've been thinking about that. I've been having to rethink and revise my own views and my own experience with violence. And for that reason, I think that this is the best moment for the book to be translated into English. I think it has something to say not only about what was happening in Mexico in 2007, but about what we are going through right now in 2025, when we began to talk about the translation, I was very happy that Sarah Booker and Robin Myers were in charge of this project.

Yeah. Now, Liliana's Invincible Summer, that's a book celebrating the life of your sister Liliana, who was murdered in 1990. Now in it, you go back to Mexico City years later to document her case. That book, Cristina, you translated that one yourself. I'm wondering why you made that decision to do that one alone.

Well, in fact, I don't see that as a translation as such. It was quite different. I found myself, I caught myself, in fact, writing this book both in English and in Spanish at the same time, in different days, really, depending on issues that I'm still trying to figure out. The way in which I explained that process now having gone through it, is that I was dealing with a matter of such magnitude emotionally for me that I needed English as a protection, as a buffer to tell a story of facts that had taken place in a different language.

So you went back and forth, really, English and Spanish different days every day?

Yes.

Wow.

At some days, I would start in Spanish, and then without warning or even a conscious decision on my side, I would start some other days in English. And so what I did, instead of correcting me, trying to do things as I usually do them, what I decided was to follow that process and to see where it would take me. And so what I would do the next day was to use the opposite language to kind of revise what I had written the day before. And so the relationship between English and Spanish here was way more intricate. And it varied on daily basis. But in this case at least, personally, I have a lot to think about. The relationship between mourning, between grieving and between pain, generally speaking, and bilingualism and living in a different language and how these so called second language or this other language might provide you with opportunities and freedoms that the language that you grew up with could not afford.

That is Cristina Rivera Garza. Her novel is called Death Takes Me. Cristina, thank you very much.

Thank you.

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