Grieving : dispatches from a wounded country / Cristina Rivera Garza ; translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker.

Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction: Taking shelter : horror, the state, and social suffering in twenty-first-century Mexico -- The sufferers. The claimant -- The visceraless state -- War and imagination -- Diary of pain by María Luisa Puga -- Tragic agency -- I won't let anyone say those are the best years of your life -- What country is this, Agripina? 2501 migrants by Alejandro Santiago -- Nonfiction -- Elvira Arellano and that which blood, tradition, and community unite -- What country is this, Agripina? -- Cacaluta -- Dried mermaids -- Violent x-rays -- The morning after -- On our toes : women against the Mexican femicide machine -- Under the narco sky. Horrorism -- The war we lost -- The neo-camelias -- The longest Sunday -- A network of holes -- Under the glare with Guillermo Fernández -- Under the narco sky -- Writing as we grieve, grieving as we write. Mourning -- Writing in migration : a desedimentation with Lina Meruane -- Writing as we grieve -- Writing against war -- The end of women's silence -- Touching is a verb : the hands of the pandemic and its inescapable questions -- Keep writing.

"Translated into English by Sarah Booker, GRIEVING is Cristina Rivera Garza's collection of short crónicas, journalism, and personal essays on systemic violence in contemporary Mexico and along the US-Mexico border. Drawing together horror theory and historical analysis, Rivera Garza 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, Rivera Garza posits that collective grief and writing is a mode of seeking social justice"-- Provided by publisher.