In 1976, Maryse Holder traveled to Mexico to pursue a life of sexual exploration. She wrote a series of letters describing her experiences, in which she expressed a desire to "wring a masterpiece from my life".

Following Holder's brutal murder in Mexico at the age of 36, these letters became the basis for the book Give Sorrow Words: Maryse Holder's Letters from Mexico. Published in 1979 by Grove Press, with an introduction by Kate Millett, it was praised by The New York Times Book Review, the Kirkus Review, and her writing compared to Genet, Jean Rhys, and Henry Miller in it's sexual candor and artistry.

In 2013, Edith Jones, the woman to whom Maryse Holder wrote those letters, re-issued Give Sorrow Words in a new edition. This long-forgotten masterpiece of feminist sexuality is timelier than ever, foreshadowing the blunt talk about a woman's erotic life embodied by Lena Dunham and others.

Give Sorrow Words is the story of one woman's shocking descent into a provocative world of lust and danger. As Maryse Holder's letters explore the last, eventful months in her life, they speak directly to the listener - forcing us to confront the pain, and even sometimes the passion, of living on the very edge of life, to the end.