Beyond Necrowriting: Imagining Chicana Futurity in Thirty Talks Weird Love

Abstract: In this essay I show that Alessandra Narváez Varela’s 2021 debut YA novel-in-verse offers a performative account of femicidio in Ciudad Juárez that is an important counterpoint to gory literary and cine- matographic representations that arguably perpetuate the murdered girls’ and women’s exploitation. Drawing on Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Restless Dead , I argue that Thirty Talks Weird Love moves beyond “necrowriting” and imagines collaborative witnessing through the dialogue between its thirteen-year-old protagonist Anamaria, or Thirteen, and Thirty, her seventeen years older self, who comes to visit her from the future. I also suggest that the speculative element of time travel is an example of Chicanafuturism in action, as Thirty’s very presence embodies Thirteen’s survival—of femicide, of cartel violence, and of her eating disorder and suicidal impulses. I further show that Anamaria’s passion for studying, writing, and revising are hallmarks of the “ChicaNerd” (Herrera 4), that these practices are central to Anamaria’s survival and evolution into Thirty, and that her text thus constitutes a “speculative testimonio.”