This week, our editors from around the world report on a new poetry anthology promoting peaceful coexistence in El Salvador, new translations of Arab women authors, and discussions of magical realism and the Isaan dialect surrounding the Thai winner of a grant from English PEN. Read on to find out more!
Nestor Gomez, Editor-at-Large, reporting from El Salvador
On August 5, Otoniel Guevara presented a new anthology titled Peace Isn’t Achieved Just With Desire at the Casa Morazán in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. In the anthology’s prologue, Guevara describes the project as a compilation of poems in defense of human rights, peaceful coexistence, and respect for life on the planet. He also characterized the anthology as a criticism of regimes that promote fanaticism, hatred, lies, totalitarianism, and disrespect for life in all its manifestations.
Inspiration for this project began several years ago when, in Guevara’s words, “a new religion was maturing in El Salvador, encouraged by a surge in journalism for sensationalism and blatant fake news in support of political projects empty of content, but rich in images and superficial concessions, especially to the youth. This populism, packaged to preserve and strengthen ignorance and ahistoricism, was rapidly coating a layer of corrosive mold: fanaticism.” Publication of the anthology was delayed because of the pandemic and the love affair that many Salvadorans established with the current ruler of El Salvador. However, supporters of the project continued to grow among friends and cohorts.
The catalyst for publication occurred on February 9, 2020, when the National Police and the Armed Forces of El Salvador, under orders of the president, attempted a coup d’état of the legislative body. This autocratic and dictatorial behavior persisted until May 1, 2021, when the entire legislative body was replaced with new members in a flagrant dismissal of Salvadoran constitutional law. Shortly after, the president eliminated the judiciary body of the government.
In October 2021, Guevara sent invitations to over two hundred Spanish-speaking poets to participate in his project with poems and testimonies. Over the span of two months, 110 poets responded to Guevara’s call. The book will be read by many poets, but Guevara expressly wishes that it be read by citizens interested in the common good and peaceful coexistence, especially the youth of the world who sometimes mistakenly think that there lies little to no danger in handing all power to the hands of the few. In the final words of the book’s prologue, Guevara calls the anthology a book that promotes peace, life, justice, and the indiscriminate sharing of beauty among human beings.
Peera Songkünnatham, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Thailand
Earlier this month, English PEN’s PEN Translates, a grant program for UK-based publishers, announced its twenty-one winners, one of whom is “vernacular magical realism from the border of Thailand and Laos.” The 2014 novel Exile (เนรเทศ) is written by Phu Kradat, to be published by Tilted Axis Press and translated by literary scholar Ram Prasansak.
Literary critic Sutida Wimuttikosol has called attention to the problem of the label of magical realism as made in and circuited through the Global North. Through the case study of middle-class Bangkok readers’ reception of Indonesian writer Eka Kurniawan’s novel Lelaki Harimau (Man Tiger), Sutida illustrates how that label can make an otherwise relatable literary work seem derivative and uninteresting in another peripheral place. Nevertheless, magical realism is a technically correct descriptor for Exile, as it juxtaposes the mythic, the historical, and an all-too-real account of interminable waiting in the country’s dysfunctional mass transit system, where a seven hours’ driving distance becomes much, much longer. These different temporal planes and explanatory frameworks come together to tell the personal and political story of internal displacement—a familiar theme in the life of the people of Isan or the Northeast—and provocatively show a condition of exile at every level. There’s also a wife’s ghost hanging around.
English PEN’s announcement underscores that this marks the first time a grant is provided to a translation from “Isaan Thai” or the “Isaan dialect of Thai.” This is a funny choice of words, since in his books, Phu Kradat calls this northeastern vernacular Lao, or a mix of Lao and Thai. He is also connected to the milieu of northeastern writers who have in the past several years objected to the legally correct but politically incorrect use of the terms “Thai-Isan” and “Isan language.” But I digress.
Readers of the Asymptote blog may have already encountered some work by Phu Kradat, as a gripping story of his, “The Progress of Josef K.’s Trial and the Appearance of a Tiger Hornet,” was published on the Translation Tuesday showcase last year. It is remarkable how works by Phu Kradat have already surfaced in English translation by many translators, of Isan and non-Isan origins alike. These include a poem, translated by Janit Feangfu, about Isan migrant workers’ homing instinct; a short story, translated by Anusara Kartlun, about well-read white-collar professionals pattering about politics and eating Isan food in a condo; and the mythic vignette “The World Shattered Yesterday” translated by Palin Ansusinha. I have a feeling Ram Prasansak will be the author’s best match yet, as his approach in pidginizing English, remaking it in Isan’s image and sound, has the potential to convey Phu Kradat’s idiosyncratic jumbling of languages and acrobatic jumping between registers.
Exile is a deliberately unpleasant but ultimately rewarding read. Let’s hope that “vernacular magical realism” has enough recognition value to draw in the maximum number of readers to give this original, informative, and disruptive book a chance.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
Once upon a decade, there was no Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth). In only eight years, what began as an initiative in 2014 has now grown into an annual celebration of women authors writing in languages other than English. At the time, the blogger and academic Meytal Radzinski noticed that the world of translated literature was heavily male-dominated, and that works by women authors made up less than thirty percent of the books translated into English. Reflecting on this gender disparity and wanting to create change, Radzinski started Women in Translation Month (read the inception blog). Since then, a dedicated body, Women in Translation (WiT), has taken it upon themselves to widen the mission.
As much as one wishes to provide a comprehensive list of Arab women in translation, such a noble aim is yet to be realized. Different initiatives are well underway in constructing such a mansion—a never-ending mission, as more and more Arab women writers are introduced to the world through translation. The oldest and most structured is PROTA: The Project for the Translation of Arabic, albeit it’s not restricted for women writers. Founded in 1980 by Salma Khadra Jayyusi (watch an interview with her), the project has brought to the English-speaking world the best of Palestinian, as well as Arab, writing.
From a wider perspective, there is a plethora on anthologies, be it verse or prose. A comprehensive database, however, is still lacking. The UNESCO’s Clearing House for Literary Translation is a primary source, but unfortunately not comprehensive, at least in the case of Arabic literature.
Focusing on translations into English, there are two notable online initiatives. The first is a database, “the only resource of its kind,” that is now hosted by Publishers Weekly. Founded in 2008 by Three Percent and Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester, it tracks all original publications in the US translated into English since 2008. The second is the well-known crowd-funded collective Arablit.
In the publishing industry, there seems to be a promising new powerful player. Founded in 2018 by UAE Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi and fellow women publishers, PublisHer is “an industry-led movement to bring gender equality to world publishing.”
This August, we invite you to join the efforts by reading Arab women in translation.
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Read more on the Asymptote blog:
- Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature (August 19, 2022)
- Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature (August 12, 2022)
- Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature (August 5, 2022)