Book Talk: A veces despierto temblando / Sometimes I Wake Up Shaking

Speaker: Ximena Santaolalla, Author of 'Sometimes I wake up shaking", lawyer, psychotherapist
Moderated by: Diane E. Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism, GSD; Co-Chair, DRCLAS Mexico Faculty Committee

A novel exploring themes of humanity, violence, and allegiance in the contexts of Guatemala, Mexico, and the US. Two Kaibil soldiers are sent to an elite military training facility in Texas. They are both trained to bring down communism, guerillas, and Guatemala’s indigenous peoples. Their lives no longer belong to them, but to their country, and perhaps to Kaibil commander Francisco Chinchilla, from the Guatemalan Secret Service, in charge of their torture, a torment that will blind them to the atrocities they witness and help perpetuate during Efraín Ríos Montt’s military dictatorship. A veces Despierto temblando is a powerful ensemble novel, written with the kind of prose that is as poetic as it is devastating.

Presented in collaboration with Mexican Cities Initiative, Graduate School of Design