The Millions

Writing Bound to Bodies: Cristina Rivera Garza in Conversation with Samantha Hunt

Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Iliac Crest is one of the most fascinating novels I’ve read in years—utterly weird yet deeply resonant in its portrayal of gendered violence.

On October 30th, Rivera Garza, Chavisa Woods, and I will meet to discuss the transgressive power of queer horror stories at the Mid-Manhattan Library at 42nd Street.

In anticipation of that conversation, I spoke with Rivera Garza over email about the relationship between language and sanity, crossing both literal and literary borderlands, and transforming people of note—in this case, Mexican author Amparo Dávila–into fictional characters.

In  you create a new language, though in the book, the language seems to be less a creation, more an emergence. It appears the way a gathering of mushrooms might spring forth after rain. Central to this language is the word .  I understand  to have something to do with water and accordingly the word’s meaning remains liquid. Can I ask what  means to you? Of

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