STRING THEORY / TEORÍA DE CUERDAS

<h2>Winner of Mexico's 2018 Gilberto Owen National Prize for Literature. Karen Villeda's <em>String Theory</em> is a long autobiographical poem that explores the death of a family member through the intimacy of kinship and a shared name: the death of the poet's aunt also named Karen within a few weeks of the author's birth. A crucial ambiguity at the heart of this exploration is whether the aunt's death by hanging was a suicide or a murder and whether that distinction can truly be made in a context of recurrent gender-based violence.</h2><p></p>