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The Violence: My Family's Colombian War
Not yet published
Expected 14 Apr 26
A powerful chronicle of Colombia’s descent into decades of civil war through the lens of an intimate, multi-generational tale of upheaval and betrayal.
When presumed president-elect Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, champion of the working class and harbinger of a new era of progressive social change, is assassinated on the eve of Colombia’s 1948 presidential election, the capital is plunged into bloodshed. So begins a singularly brutal period of Colombia’s history known simply as la violencia—a bloody civil war that spawned decades of turmoil and splintered the country into ever-shifting factions.
The Violence is an intimate history of this conflict—told not from the political center of the war but from the mountainous finca that Adriana E. Ramírez’s family tended to for generations, and through the eyes of her formidable grandmother, Esther. With startling lyricism, Ramírez illuminates the specter of violence—from guerilla warfare to the brutalities found so often in romantic relationships to the spontaneous and senseless violence steeped into everyday Colombian life during this period—and the threat that it poses to a country, and a family, that is trying to stay whole. Gracefully braiding together macrohistory, family history, and personal narrative, Adriana E. Ramírez traces these parallel stories of upheaval in a sweeping portrait of a country and family in flux.
When presumed president-elect Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, champion of the working class and harbinger of a new era of progressive social change, is assassinated on the eve of Colombia’s 1948 presidential election, the capital is plunged into bloodshed. So begins a singularly brutal period of Colombia’s history known simply as la violencia—a bloody civil war that spawned decades of turmoil and splintered the country into ever-shifting factions.
The Violence is an intimate history of this conflict—told not from the political center of the war but from the mountainous finca that Adriana E. Ramírez’s family tended to for generations, and through the eyes of her formidable grandmother, Esther. With startling lyricism, Ramírez illuminates the specter of violence—from guerilla warfare to the brutalities found so often in romantic relationships to the spontaneous and senseless violence steeped into everyday Colombian life during this period—and the threat that it poses to a country, and a family, that is trying to stay whole. Gracefully braiding together macrohistory, family history, and personal narrative, Adriana E. Ramírez traces these parallel stories of upheaval in a sweeping portrait of a country and family in flux.
Kindle Edition
Expected publication April 14, 2026
76 people want to read
About the author
Adriana E. Ramírez
7 books16 followersAdriana E. Ramírez is an award-winning American writer of Mexican and Colombian origin, as well as a critic, columnist, and performance poet based in Pittsburgh.
She won the inaugural PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize in 2015 for her novella-length work of nonfiction, Dead Boys (Little A, 2016). From 2016-2020 she served as Critic-at-Large for the Los Angeles Times Book Section. She is the recipient of the Pittsburgh Foundation’s 2019 Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award.
Ramírez has won local and national awards for her work as a columnist and book critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she the edits of InReview and serves as a member of the editorial board.
Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, the Boston Globe, ESPN’s The Undefeated (now Andscape), the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, PENAmerica, and Literary Hub. She used to write 45-word book reviews for People Magazine.
She and novelist Angie Cruz founded Aster(ix) Journal, a literary journal giving voice to the censored and the marginalized.
Ramírez is the author of poetry collection The Swallows (Blue Sketch Press 2016) and co-editor of the anthology In the Shadow of the Mic (Bridge & Tunnel Books 2020). She was the co-host of the 2021-2022 City of Asylum/Aster(ix) Journal podcast, Charla Cultural.
Her debut full-length work of nonfiction, The Violence, is forthcoming from Scribner on April 14, 2026.
She won the inaugural PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize in 2015 for her novella-length work of nonfiction, Dead Boys (Little A, 2016). From 2016-2020 she served as Critic-at-Large for the Los Angeles Times Book Section. She is the recipient of the Pittsburgh Foundation’s 2019 Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award.
Ramírez has won local and national awards for her work as a columnist and book critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she the edits of InReview and serves as a member of the editorial board.
Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, the Boston Globe, ESPN’s The Undefeated (now Andscape), the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, PENAmerica, and Literary Hub. She used to write 45-word book reviews for People Magazine.
She and novelist Angie Cruz founded Aster(ix) Journal, a literary journal giving voice to the censored and the marginalized.
Ramírez is the author of poetry collection The Swallows (Blue Sketch Press 2016) and co-editor of the anthology In the Shadow of the Mic (Bridge & Tunnel Books 2020). She was the co-host of the 2021-2022 City of Asylum/Aster(ix) Journal podcast, Charla Cultural.
Her debut full-length work of nonfiction, The Violence, is forthcoming from Scribner on April 14, 2026.
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December 22, 2025
This is a difficult story to convey in an accessible way. It focuses on the author's grandmother and the many siblings and offspring that add to the story of a brutal civil war that never seems to end. I occasionally had to stop for a deep breath before continuing, but it was worth it.
Survival with the slimmest of margins for error powerfully told.
Survival with the slimmest of margins for error powerfully told.
Displaying 1 of 1 review