67. Dead Girls | Selva Almada
translated by annie mcdermott
In memory of Andrea, María Luisa and Sarita
Friends,
I am eternally grateful to Martha and her own personal challenge to read more translated works, as she brings so many wonderful books to my attention. You can share in the magic here too. I found “Dead Girls” via her August - Women in Translation post:
Selva introduces her book with a haunting paragraph — “The research (..) took me three years. Writing the book you now hold in your hands took me three months. The writing process was sustained and painful. As I wrote the stories of Andrea, María Luisa and Sarita, fragments of my own life story and those of women I knew began to work their way in. My friends and I were still alive, but we could have been Andrea, María Luisa or Sarita. We were just luckier.”
Femicide is generally defined as the murder of women simply because they are women. In 2018, 139 women died in the UK as a result of male violence. (via The Guardian) In Argentina this number is far higher, with 278 cases registered for that same year.
Selva Almada narrates the case of three small-town teenage girls murdered in the 1980’s; three unpunished deaths that occurred before the word ‘femicide’ was even coined. I found this book incredibly upsetting, as someone who has grown up in a country with alarmingly high femicide rates, in fact, South Africa has the highest rate in Africa. Almada writes about the deaths of three Argentinian girls, crimes without culprits, while Argentina was celebrating the return of democracy. 19-year old Andrea Danne, stabbed in her own bed; 15-year old María Luisa Quevedo, raped, strangled, and dumped in wasteland; and 20-year old Sarita Mundín, whose disfigured body was found on a river bank.
A brutal but necessary read.
some other things:
the process behind designing a book cover
10 things about ernest hemingway your english teacher probably didn't tell you
duncan grant and his tracksuit
chickadees on ice (!!)
I’m so glad you enjoyed it! After I finished Dead Girls I was wanting more on violence in South America told in a fact/fiction way and I read ‘In the Time of the Butterflies’ by Julia Alvarez. I enjoyed it and in lots of ways it felt similar to Dead Girls. Thought I’d pass the title on xox