Cristina Rivera Garza (born October 1, 1964) is a Mexican author and professor best known for her fictional work, with various novels such as Nadie me verá llorar (No One Will See Me Cry) winning a number of Mexico’s highest literary awards as well as awards abroad. The author was born in the state of Tamaulipas, near the U.S.-Mexico border, and has developed her career in teaching and writing in both the United States and Mexico. She has taught history and creative writing at various universities and institutions, including the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Tec de Monterrey, Campus Toluca, and University of California, San Diego, but currently holds a position at the University of Houston. Rivera Garza is the recipient of the 2020 MacArthur Fellowship. Some of her most recent accolades include the Juan Vicente Melo National Short Story Award, the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize (Garza is the only author to win this award twice), and the Anna Seghers International Prize.
(Wikipedia)
Rivera Garza in a World without Refuge
This is the wild west (wild north?) Russian style—or Swedish or Latvian, even Mexican or Argentine, it matters little, as it is the same almost everywhere now that untrammeled extraction reduces and eliminates any refuge a forest may offer, for wolves or for children, or for lovers on the lam.
See also the conversation video with Cristina Rivera Garza.
- Rivera Garza, Cristina. The Taiga Syndrome. Trans. Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana. St Louis, MO: Dorothy, 2018.
With Cristina Rivera Garza
A conversation with author Cristina Rivera Garza
Rivera Garza videos
Cristina Rivera Garza: 2019 National Book Festival:
Mexican Writer Cristina Rivera Garza:
- Aslanyan, Anna. “The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garza: A Fairytale Quest.” The Guardian. November 14, 2019.
- “colofón.” Diccionario de la lengua Española. Real Academia Española.
- “colophon, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2022. Web. November 14, 2022.
- Fitch, Andy. “Question of Genre and Gender: Talking to Cristina Rivera Garza.” Los Angeles Review of Books. December 14, 2018.
- “Hogmanay Traditions Old and New.” BBC News.
- Sánchez Prado, Ignacio. “The Intense Atmospheres of Language: Cristina Rivera Garza’s ‘The Taiga Syndrome.’” Los Angeles Review of Books. October 9, 2018.
- “The Taiga Syndrome.” Dorothy: A Publishing Project.
- Tocco, Fabricio. Latin American Detectives against Power: Individualism, the State, and Failure in Crime Fiction. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2022.
- Velasco, Raquel. “Frontera e hibridación en dos novelas cortas del norte de México.” Mitologías hoy 26 (June 2022): 141-151.
- Walczak, Graznya. “Tropos del viaje a la naturaleza silvestre en El mal de la taiga (2012) de Cristina Rivera Garza.” Káñina: Revista de Artes y Letras de la Universidad de Costa Rica 39.1 (2015): 187-198.
Meeting a local bigwig, “the man in charge of the local lumber industry,” the narrator and her translator are offered first tea, and then vodka (54). They are also served bread with salt, what may be parsley, and “hunks of meat that our host ate with his fingers” in an ostentatious display of plenty in a village otherwise marked by scarcity: “All those liquids. All that acid. I remember the noise of gold chains around forearms and wrists” (55). It is possible that the vodka, like the swimming pool in the man’s garden, is a luxury import, out of place, but it fits with the taiga if we are imagining the setting to be Russia or Scandinavia. Vodka is not obviously (except, again, as an import, conspicuously consumed by a fraction of the middle classes) a Latin American drink. The so-called “vodka belt” passes through Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, as well as Russia and the Nordic countries. Traditionally distilled from grains, potatoes, or sugar beet, it is typically drunk neat, and warms the insides over a long northern Winter night.
Rivera Garza questions
The following questions are taken from your blog posts…
On Running Away
What do you think the woman who escaped to the forest was seeking and do you think she found it?
Why do you think she ran away (unless this was explained and I missed it entirely)? Do you think the man’s first wife really died in a car crash? Why did he take the time to mention her to the detective?
On Symbols
How does the taiga landscape function as a metaphor or symbol in the novel? And what themes do you think it represents?
What do you think is the symbolism behind the wolf attack, why did the detective say that the wolf gave them a compassionate or graceful look before attacking them?
On Endings
Do you think the story came to a proper closure? Why do you think so? What makes a proper ‘ending’?
So did that wild child die at the end? Was he killed by a mob of lumberjacks? I wasn’t super clear on that. Also what do you think the book meant by ‘falling in love’ or ‘falling out of love’?
Other
Is this book truly Latin American literature to you? What makes it so, or keeps it from being?
How did you understand the constant medicalisation of the detectives fantastical surroundings?
How does the novel’s exploration of the mediation between writing and experience, as well as the limitations of language in conveying meaning, resonate with broader cultural conversations about representation, translation, and communication in today’s world?
What childhood fairytale did this twisted, mysterious, and eerie novel remind you of?
Which past important theme that we have mentioned in class did you see used most in this book? How?
How reliable do you think the narrator in this story is?
Did you like nonlinear aspect to the story? Did you feel like it added or took away from the overall narrative?
How does Rivera Garza’s skillful use of ambiguity and uncertainty add to the mystery and intrigue of the novel? How did it impact your interpretation of the story, including its themes of identity, reality, and human nature?