The Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza won this Monday Pulitzer Prize in Memory or Autobiography category by Liliana’s invincible summera work in which she addresses the femicide of her younger sister that occurred in 1990.
“A gender story about the author’s 20-year-old sister, murdered by an ex-boyfriendwhich mixes memoirs, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography, united with a determination born of loss,” argued the organization of these awards, dependent on Columbia University (New York), when granting her the award.
From Berlin, where he currently resides, Rivera Garza dedicated the award to Liliana, his sister. “I am very happy to think that her name is going to reach even further, another way of showing that the violence that ended her and that of so many women finally has its limits.”
[Cristina Rivera Garza: “Mi hermana asesinada es una herida para toda la vida”]
Furthermore, she was satisfied that “the names of those feminicides who take advantage of such a structurally unequal world will end in infamy, which is where they should end.”
The Mexican author competed in this 108th edition with The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness and the Tragedy of Good Intentionsof Jonathan Rosenand with The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sightof Andrew Lelandboth Penguin Press titles.
“This book would have been impossible if I had not had my sister’s personal archive, which fights against the narrative of the State and patriarchy“said the author in an interview with El Cultural.
Garza, also a historian and teacher, had previously won with this book – published in English by Penguin Random House and Hogarth Books and in Spain through the Random House label – the Xavier Villaurrutia Writers’ Prize for Writers 2021 or the Rodolfo Walsh Award at the Gijón Black Week 2022.
In addition to the section in which Garza won, who has dealt with controversial topics such as migration, politics and mental health throughout his career, the winners in other artistic categories were also revealed. In addition to recognizing the most brilliant works of the journalistic world, the Pulitzers are lavish in the fields of literature, poetry and music.
Other winners in Pulitzer artistic categories
The winner in Fiction was Jayne Anne Phillips with Night Watcha novel “of great beauty,” according to the Pulitzer Board, for its portrait of an asylum in West Virginia after the Civil War, where a seriously wounded veteran, a 12-year-old girl, and her mother, mistreated by a soldier confederate, fight to heal.
In it drama the New York author triumphed Eboni Booth with Primary Trust“a simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth,” according to the organization.
No right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Eraof Jacqueline Jonestriumphed in the section related to History with this “stunningly original” reconstruction of the lives of Boston’s African Americans that “profoundly alters our understanding of the city’s abolitionist legacy.”
In section BiographyJonathan Eig won the Pulitzer with King: a Lifea portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. that draws on new sources to “enrich the understanding” of each stage of the civil rights leader’s life.
[Los Pulitzer se vuelcan con la guerra de Ucrania: premio a las coberturas de Bucha, Mariúpol y a dos españoles]
This award was shared with Ilyon Woo and his Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedoma narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848.
As to poetryBrandon Som, of Mexican and Chinese origin, triumphed with Gutswhere he highlighted the “dignity” of his family’s work life and their effort to create a community in a new country for them.
The well-known collaborator of Anglo-Saxon media Nathan Thrall won in Nonfiction with A day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy“a thorough and intimate account of life under the Israeli occupation of the West Bank”, told through a Palestinian father whose five-year-old son dies in a school bus accident when Israeli and Palestinian rescue teams are delayed, locked in comply with safety regulations.
Finally, the 2024 Pulitzer music award went to Tyshawn Sorey by Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith)premiering March 16, 2023 at Atlanta Symphony Hall, an introspective saxophone concerto.
