Published in 2017 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
First Feminist Press edition 2017
Copyright © 2002 by Cristina Rivera Garza
Translation copyright © 2017 by Sarah Booker
Afterword copyright © 2017 by Elena Poniatowska
First published in Spanish as La cresta de Ilión in 2002 by Tusquets Editores.
All rights reserved.
This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First printing October 2017
Cover and text design by Suki Boynton
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rivera Garza, Cristina, 1964- author. | Booker, Sarah, translator. | Poniatowska, Elena, writer of afterword.
Title: The Iliac Crest / by Cristina Rivera Garza; translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker; afterword by Elena Poniatowska.
Other titles: Cresta de Ilión. English
Description: First Feminist Press edition. | New York, NY: The Feminist Press at City University of New York, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017015426 (print) | LCCN 2017027002 (ebook) | ISBN 9781936932061 (E-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Identity (Psychology)--Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Gothic. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Literary.
Classification: LCC PQ7298.28.I8982 (ebook) | LCC PQ7298.28.I8982 C7413 2017 (print) | DDC 863/.64--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015426
For lrg
The textual intention presupposes readers who know the language conspiracy in operation. The mark is not in-itself but in-relation-to-other-marks. The mark seeks the seeker of the system behind the events. The mark inscribes the i which is the her in the it which meaning moves through.
—STEVE McCAFFERY, Panopticon
I have lived between Mexico and the United States for most of my life, countries characterized by rigid gender hierarchies and femicides along post-NAFTA borders. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why I took to writing a novel delving into the fluid nature of gender dis/identifications. I chose writings by Amparo Dávila, a marginalized Mexican woman writer of the so-called Midcentury Generation, to be the center of the novel’s enigma, set in a time in which disappearance has become a plague.
Borders are a subtle but pervasive force in this book. I was born on the eastern tip of the US-Mexico border and lived between San Diego (California) and Tijuana (Baja California) when I wrote The Iliac Crest. There are questions you cannot escape when approaching immigration: Who are you? Where do you come from? Anything to declare? Awareness of geopolitical borders soon leads to questions about the many lines we cross—or don’t, or aren’t allowed to—as we go about our daily lives. Our bodies are keys that open only certain doors. Our bodies speak indeed, and our bones are our ultimate testimony. Will we be betrayed by our bones?
While women’s voices throughout the world continue to be silenced and those in power still argue for the irrelevance of gender equality, characters in this book understand that gender—and what is done in the name of gender—can be lethal. When disappearing becomes an epidemic, especially among women, this book reminds readers that there is always a trace left: a manuscript, a footprint, a dent, an echo worthy of our full attention and our inquiries. When women disappear from our factories and our history—from our lives—we have to reexamine what is normal. Reality may have become inexplicable or impenetrable, and therefore maddening, but questioning such circumstances lies at the core of this novel.
—CRISTINA RIVERA GARZA
Houston, Texas, 2017
CONTENTS
Initial invitation:
“But what are those books doing in the pool?” I asked, surprised. “Won’t they get wet?”
“Nothing will happen to them. Water is their element and they’ll stay there for a long time, until someone comes along who deserves them, or who dares to rescue them.”
“Why don’t you fish one out for me?”
“Why don’t you go get it yourself?” he said, looking at me with a mocking gaze I found impossible to bear.
“Why not?” I answered, and I dove into the pool.
—AMPARO DÁVILA
NOW, AFTER SO MUCH TIME HAS PASSED, I AM STILL DWELLING on it, incredulous. How is it possible that someone like me allowed an unknown woman into my house on a stormy night?
I hesitated before opening the door. For a long time, I debated between closing the book I was reading or staying seated in my chair, in front of the roaring fire, as if nothing had happened. In the end, her insistence won me over. I opened the door. I