Culture
Mariana Enriquez’s new book connects her interest in cemeteries with Argentina’s past
Mariana Enriquez, the Argentine author known for her chilling fiction, explores her fascination with cemeteries in her new nonfiction book, 'Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave.' This work ref...
Mariana Enriquez’s new book connects her interest in cemeteries with Argentina’s past
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Interactive Transcript
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Hey all, it's NPR's Book of the Day podcast.
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I'm Glenn Welden.
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You don't have to be a gaff to enjoy a stroll through a cemetery, especially this time
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of year, with the leaves crunching under your feet.
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Arthur Mariana Enriquez was a gaff kid, but she says her lifelong fascination with graveyards
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is rooted in something deeper than her teenage eyeliner in black nail polish.
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She was born in Argentina during a time when the government was disappearing a lot of people.
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An entire generation was killed by the military dictatorship without graves to mark their
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passing.
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Enriquez's latest book, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave, is a celebration of final
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resting places around the world.
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Places she's visited, stories she's gathered.
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She talked to Aisha Roscoe about her fascination with sepulchers, tombs, crypts, catacombs, and
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humble church graveyards.
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Here's Aisha.
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On NPR's Ted Radio Hour, investigative journalist Hilke Schellman digs into how companies
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are using AI for hiring and what it means for your job search.
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We are at a tipping point.
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We have AI tools generating your resumes.
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We have other avatars for jobs like, you know, it's AI versus AI.
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Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Cemetery's might not be everyone's idea of fun, but for Argentine author Mariana Enriquez,
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they're full of life.
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They're a doorway into history, memory, and sometimes the supernatural.
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Enriquez, known for her chilling fiction, turns to real resting places around the world
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and her new nonfiction book, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave, a series of personal
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short stories she's collected over the years while traveling to cemeteries across four
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continents.
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Mariana Enriquez joins us now.
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Thank you for being here.
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Well, thank you so much for having me, I'm very glad.
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Why are you so interested in cemeteries?
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They seem like your favorite place to visit.
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The first reason is I used to be a golf when I was young, like a golf from age six or
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something.
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With the dark hair, dark, wearing black all the time sort of thing.
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Reading at the garland pool and then with the ears, I learned that also cemeteries have
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a lot to say about life, about the history of the people.
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And then Argentina in the seventies, the decade where I was born, had a dictatorship that made
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a lot of bodies disappeared.
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Therefore there's a generation of people that were killed by the government and they
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don't have a grave.
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I realized that trauma that is very engraved in my life somehow made me feel that a grave,
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a tombstone, it's something of comfort.
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It's a final thing in a good way.
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So between the very fun, golf kind of thing, there's also a deep reason for all this.
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And that's why I decided this could be a book.
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In the book you talk about the burial of your friend's mother who was disappeared during
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Argentina's dictatorship, this is a deep philosophical question.
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But why do you think it matters that we find the body after all that time that we have
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the burial?
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Why does that matter to us so much?
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Because grieving is important, people don't go through that process, it's absolutely
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cruel.
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We don't know what happens after death.
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And the only comfort we have is the comfort of grieving, of being respect, of having a place
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to go and remember.
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Memory, it's right.
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You visit a lot of cemeteries with all of this history, with colonial settlers, with
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the marginalized, the disappeared, they're all buried, maybe not side by side.
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Or I guess how do you see those distinctions in life, classism and all of this stuff?
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Play out in cemeteries, and is there maybe one cemetery where you felt the contrast most
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striking?
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Well, in every cemetery you have the reach at the beginning or most of the time, the
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reach at the beginning with the marble, etc., the middle class, and then the people on
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the ground.
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But sometimes it's not, it's in different cemeteries and New Orleans, for example.
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And then there's, for example, what happens a lot in post-colonial societies like Argentina
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or Australia.
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An island in Argentina is called Island Martingarcia, and an island in Australia is called Roddes Island,
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white settlers, they have their cemetery with their colonial families saying they came
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from this and this place in Europe.
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And then you have mostly am marked, in the case of Australia for the aboriginals and from
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the indigenous people in Argentina.
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So yes, you can see it sometimes in the same cemetery, sometimes in two cemeteries in
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the same town, but it's the same as life.
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That's what's very striking.
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When you're going to these cemeteries, do you often meet people who also have the same
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interest as you in cemeteries?
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Do you meet fellow travelers?
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I do sometimes, rarely.
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When you meet a lot is what I call peregrines.
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People that go this to see a special grave and you are going to visit the same person and
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sometimes to recognize each other, like we see each other.
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Yeah, there's a very strange, I guess I'm one of those strange people too, but to me the
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others look strange.
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Well, you went to the Paris catacombs to see what remains of the holy innocent cemetery,
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but you take a souvenir.
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Oh, that's illegal.
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Where's it in the book, though?
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I know, but when things are in books, you can always say, well, that's a bit of fiction.
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I can say that, but this is a non-fiction book, so you know, whatever.
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But I want to the catacombs and I'm fascinated by this cemetery because it's featured in
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many, many books I love.
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And I said, okay, I'm going to take a little bone with me.
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I mean, I fully respect the people in the catacombs in Paris and stuff, but the security is not
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great.
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Clearly, clearly, because it was not difficult to do that.
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You may not want to say if you still have it because the authorities may be listening,
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but what do you think of something like that and the respect for the dead?
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Do you take that seriously?
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Yes, I, of course, I think that the dead maybe I was a moment of insanity.
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It's very wrong.
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But since I've been very respectful with it, but I also think taking it more lightly
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that sometimes I think when I'm doing these investigations and you know, I'm walking there
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and taking my notes and seeing what's written on the graves and the fact that the dead are so
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lonely, sometimes I think, but the yesterday you can be a bit less solemn and respectful and go
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there and have some have a coke and have a chat.
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There were people, there are people and I think they would like a friend.
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It sounds weird, but it's not.
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I wouldn't like to be there lonely forever.
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Because you could have some joy.
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Yeah, you could have some joy around you.
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Do you know where you want to be buried?
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I think you talk about this in the book and how did you decide?
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The cemetery of Recoletheim Buenos Aires with Eva Peron is buried among other people,
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but the most famous is Eva Peron, Evita.
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It's a very aristocratic cemetery.
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Therefore, you only can be buried there if you are a member of one of those aristocratic
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families, which I'm not.
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Since I'm not an aristocratic person, I have to occupy that.
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And the only way to occupy that cemetery is, you know, to have someone put my ashes there.
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And I want them to be thrown in a grave that it's a pyramid that says,
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there's nothing here, only dust and bones, nothing.
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That's Mariana and Rikas.
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Her new book, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave, comes out on Tuesday.
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Thank you so much for joining us.
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No, thank you. It was great.
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