Terrestrial

A fiercely-poetic, tenderly-observed work of nonfiction that renders an intrepid portrait of young womens' travels on the fringes of Mexico and the United States, by the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Liliana’s Invincible Summer

We come from far away and, all of a sudden, we no longer know where we are going.

In this new collection of genre-defying stories by Cristina Rivera Garza, a woman tours her old lover's hometown after being abandoned by her, years earlier. Two girls ride a train in search of a lake that neither have confirmed exists. A group of workers build a temporary home, only to see it destroyed by the state. 

With little baggage and much bravado, the characters in Terrestrial hitchhike, migrate, take trains, wander or, at times, fly, to survive the mandates of patriarchy and capitalism. On dusty roads or by a lake turned suddenly ominous, they remain in close contact with the earth's surface, sensing its wild promise and menacing enclosures, its degradation and enduring beauty.

As she did in her Pulitzer Prize winning memoir Liliana’s Invincible Summer, Rivera Garza forges new forms, experimenting with structure and time as she tails the young travelers with shimmering and honest prose. Combining journalism, novelistic writing, and themes of female freedom, gore capitalism, and class struggle, Terrestrial is a meditation about travel and distance, and our ties to the earth we tread on.Cristina Rivera Garza is the award-winning author of Death Takes Me, The Taiga Syndrome, and The Iliac Crest, among many other books. Her memoir, Liliana’s Invincible Summer, won the Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, Rivera Garza is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Chair and director of the PhD program in creative writing in Spanish at the University of Houston.

About the Translator:

Christina MacSweeney is an award-winning literary translator. She has translated works by such authors as Valeria Luiselli, Daniel Saldaña París, Julián Herbert, and Karla Suárez. She has also contributed to various anthologies of Latin American literature.Translated by Christina MacSweeney; Winner of the Pulitzer Prize