"Cemeteries might not be everyone's idea of fun, but for Argentine author Mariana Enriquez, they're full of life. They're a doorway into history, memory and sometimes the supernatural. Enriquez, known for her chilling fiction, turns to real resting places around the world in her new nonfiction book "Somebody Is Walking On Your Grave," a series of personal short stories she's collected over the years while traveling to cemeteries across four continents."
"I learned that also cemeteries have a lot to say about life, about the history of the people. And then Argentina in the '70s, the decade where I was born, had a dictatorship that made a lot of bodies disappear. Therefore, there's a generation of people that were killed by the government, and they don't have a grave. I realized that that trauma, that is very engraved in my life, somehow made me feel that a grave, a tombstone - it's something of comfort. It's a final thing in a good way."
Cemeteries function as doorways into history, memory, and the supernatural. Personal visits to burial sites across four continents produced a series of short, reflective narratives about graves and mourning. Early gothic interests combined with the legacy of Argentina's 1970s dictatorship shape the attraction to tombstones. The dictatorship caused many disappearances, leaving families without graves and denying ritual closure. Graves and burials serve as instruments of grieving, comfort, and finality, restoring a sense of closure for communities affected by enforced disappearances and truncated mourning processes.
Read at www.npr.org
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