Dead Girls by Selva Almada



While coming back home at 10 in the night after my college, I used to have my lab coat filled with essentials. Essentials as in a tiny bottle of sanitiser, my mobile and my knee hammer with its end sharpened. At even a minute movement, I clutch my knee hammer in a vice grip, ready to stab. Always looking over my shoulder, always talking to someone while I walk home on a deserted road. Training the street dogs to walk with me and feeding packets of biscuits as a reward. We all have been there. I am sorry, every woman has been there. On the surface smiling and showing our pearly whites, while checking for easy exits, probable things to use as weapons and always sketching an escape plan. One part of the mind is constantly in a struggle with another part.



And yet, women are killed. Raped, tortured, mutilated, used and thrown away like a tissue, in their own homes, by their trusted ones, by the unknown men/women, by the people who hate the women and especially the privileged brats who knew that they can get away with doing anything under the sun. And let us not forget how one's husband or boyfriend or father or brother or uncle "loves" the women in their house. But yes, women are lucky to be alive in this world, as if we are handed out the opportunity to live and we have to be thankful for it. What a privilege it is to be a woman who hasn't faced violence!



Dead Girls by Selva Almada talks about 3 families that happened in her teens that went unpunished. Almada researched for 3 years, read several reports, newspaper articles, interviews and conducted interviews with the surviving family members to write this journalistic fiction in just 3 months. One can spot the urgency with which this book has been written. These 3 women, Sarita Mundín—a 20-year-old who worked several jobs before turning to sex work, María Luisa Quevedo—a 15-year-old who had just started work as a maid and Andrea Danne—a student stabbed in her bed, have never seen their 21st birthday while I sit here and furiously typing away in my mobile feels like an utter privilege.



Almada writes with surprising tenderness about these women and their surviving families that just want me to shout on a few so-called journalists we have in India. The respect she has for the women and their families is evident is something that many journalists have to learn. Annie McDermott has mentioned in an interview that she'll be happy if this book makes people angry rather sad. One can feel the anger bubbling like a storm in the writing. McDermott has done a wonderful job in translating this anger from Spanish to English. 



An interesting thing I found is, swap Argentina for India or any country for that matter, we still have similar statistics staring at your face. With violence against women, increasing particularly in this lockdown period, Dead Girls is a book everybody should read. With straight and sharp prose, Dead Girls is a book that makes you angry by showing ugly truth, wriggling around in a full view (in the words of the translator) and makes reading this book an unforgettable experience.