Place: Mexico

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

March 28, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by René Esaú Sánchez, Sayani Sarkar, and Wambua Muindi

The latest literary news from Kenya, India, and México!

This week, our editors-at-large take us to India, Kenya, and México. From a cross-cultural poetry retreat to a crime writer’s conference, read on to find out more!

Réne Esaú Sánchez, Editor-at-Large, reporting from México

Not so long ago, I was talking with some friends about the Guadalajara International Book Fair and how, for many locals, an event like that was actually their only chance to find certain books, meet certain authors and even reflect upon their literary activities. Despite the importance of the Fair, literary circulation remains centralized in Mexico City, while book commercialization in other places like Guadalajara, Monterrey, or Oaxaca is always secondary.

This is why I find it important to celebrate events like the Yucatán International Reading Fair (FILEY), which will conclude this Sunday, March 30. This year, it has hosted important authors including Cristina Rivera Garza, Verónica Murguía, Brenda Lozano, Jorge Comensal, and Xita Rubert. At the Fair, the 2025 José Emilio Pacheco Award for Excellence in Literature was presented to Alberto Ruy Sánchez, a prolific novelist who, in his unique style, shared the reasons behind his writing:

I write to know, to explore vast dimensions of reality that only literature can penetrate. I also write to remember, but no less, I write to forget. I write to extend my body, my senses, to experience the sensuality of the world day after day. I write for pleasure, for desire, for rage. To expose the falsification of icons, the abuse of public power. I write to be hated and to be loved, more so, to be desired. I write to propose new spaces in this world, to create places.

As its name suggests, FILEY has also been a space to reflect on why, how, and from where we read, something essential if we want to address the problem of cultural centralization. As María Teresa Mézquita, the Fair’s director, said in her opening remarks at the festival, beyond numbers and sales, the event is driven by a desire to foster personal growth, learning, and a cultural environment enriched precisely through reading.

It is good, as Ruy Sánchez’s remarks suggest, to know why we write; just as important is knowing why we read.

Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large reporting from Kenya READ MORE…

Death, Discourse, and Disarray: A Review of Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza

March 19, 2025  |  in Reviews  |  by Linnea Gradin

Is it possible to write a novel that seeks to have a clear political message while arguing against the desire to look for answers in literature?

Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers, Hogarth, 2025

Death Takes Me, the latest novel by Cristina Rivera Garza to be translated into English, starts with a sort of epigraph titled “The Castrated Men.” The epigraph is a quote by Slovene philosopher and sociologist Renata Salecl: “However, with humans, castration should not be understood as the basis for denying the possibility of the sexual relationship, but as the prerequisite for any sexual relation at all. It can even be said that it is only because subjects are castrated that human relations as such can exist.”

The novel thus immediately establishes its premise, both in terms of tone and theme, but also hints at Rivera Garza’s fragmentary and intertextual writing style. By quoting Salecl, who was inspired by Lacanian theory on castration not as a physical mutilation but as a limitation on language, culture, and social norms, she throws the reader right into the middle of the type of discourse on gender dynamics with which Death Takes Me will attempt to engage.

As the novel begins in earnest, we find Professor Cristina Rivera Garza—the main character as well as the name of the author herself—on a run through the alleys of an unknown city when she comes across the body of a young man. The man has been mutilated, his penis cut off, laying in “a collection of impossible angles.” Accompanying the body are four lines of poetry, written in a red lipstick, from “Árbol De Diana” by Alejandra Pizarnik, a legendary Argentinian poet active in the 50s and 60s:

beware of me, my love
beware of the silent woman in the desert
of the traveler with an emptied glass
and of her shadow’s shadow

After reporting the crime to the police, Cristina, herself an expert in Pizarnik’s poetry, becomes entangled with The Detective, the woman assigned to investigate the case, both as an accomplice and a suspect. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

February 21, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by MARGENTO, René Esaú Sánchez, and Sayani Sarkar

Our editors bring you the latest from India, Mexico, and Romanian letters.

A vital new project to resurrect the works of a great Romanian poet in the English language, a slew of ambitious and global-minded book festivals in India, and a fair to highlight Oaxacan writing and languages in Mexico—our editors are bringing you the latest from a literary landscape that continues to expand in richness, variety, and intercultural exange.

MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Romania

In 1889, Mihai Eminescu—the iconic late romantic/early modernist Romanian poet—died at the age of thirty-nine, leaving behind only one published collection but tens of thousands of unreleased manuscripts. As they were gradually unearthed and released over the decades following his death, the posthumous publications only increased Eminescu’s fame and critical acclaim. Despite this unparalleled stature in Romanian literary history, however, the poet is relatively unknown to English-language readers—an issue that paradoxically has nothing to do with a lack of translations. In fact, a sizeable portion of Romanian and Anglophone translators and writers have tried their hand at this hugely demanding task, but they’ve all largely failed in two essential respects (to smaller or larger extents): first, in rendering the oceanic vastness and depth of the oeuvre, and, second, in capturing the exquisite euphony to an extent by which a non-Romanian reader could sense the original’s inescapable fascination.

One of the most important recent events in Romanian letters has now set out to address both those shortcomings in a spectacular fashion; K.V. Twain (Diana Cârligeanu’s pen-name), a young poet, writer, and translator educated in the US and Japan, has undertaken the task of translating Eminescu’s collected poems in an eight-volume series to be published by Eikon Press, and the first instalment was launched in January under the aegis of the Romanian Literary Translators Association in Bucharest. The association’s director, multilingual poet and performer Peter Sragher, was the event’s enthusiastic host, while literary critics Christian Crăciun and Vianu Mureșan contributed generous praise for the project.  READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

January 31, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, René Esaú Sánchez, and Wambua Muindi

The latest in literary news from Hong Kong, Mexico, and Kenya!

This week, we mourn the loss of one of Kenya’s boldest voices in non-fiction and reportage, look in on multimedia and interdisciplinary revivals of literary works in Hong Kong, and celebrate the poetry of one’s native tongue in Mexico. Read on to find out more!

Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Kenya

In Kenya, the year began on a sombre note for writers and readers, as on January 11, Rasna Warah breathed her last. Her prolific and bold body of work includes Triple Heritage: A Journey to Self-Discovery (1998), Mogadishu Then and Now: A Pictorial Tribute to Africa’s Most Wounded City (2012), War Crimes: How Warlords, Politicians, Foreign Governments and Aid Agencies Conspired to Create a Failed State in Somalia (2014), and Unsilenced: Unmasking the United Nations’ Culture of Cover-Ups, Corruption, and Impunity (2016)—this latter work stemming from her stint as an editor with UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme. A Kenyan of South Asian extraction, Warah was a committed social critic and brought this fire to her journalism and writing. Her courageous journalism, passionate writing in local dailies, and numerous X quips on national, regional, continental, and world politics endeared her to the digital public, where she remained active before and during her diagnosis of breast cancer in 2022. The loss of her voice and talent is immense, demonstrated by the outpouring of grief and reverential eulogies, and standing as a testament to the power of the pen. Among others, this grief was  displayed in the tribute poem by writer Tony Mochama, celebrating Warah’s career and detailing her courage and commitment to social justice. Rest in power Rasna Warah! READ MORE…

‘My writer friends used to say: you’re writing Trainspotting in Comala’: An Interview with Mateo García Elizondo

January 8, 2025  |  in Interviews  |  by Elisabeth Goemans

When you're reading, you're always in that painful or uncomfortable present.

I first came across Mateo García Elizondo in the 2021 Granta issue featuring the Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists; the compilation included his short story ‘Capsule’, about a man subjected to life-long, unbearable suffering in an absurd, dystopian penitentiary system. Struggling to find their way in unwelcoming environments, from outer space to the famously liminal city of Tijuana, García Elizondo’s characters are often those who are marginalised, those we don’t even bother taking pity in, those who quietly tell their story while the world refuses to listen. With empathy but without sentimentality, García Elizondo grants the reader a privileged insight in the mind of his protagonists.

How to escape the eternal, unbearable present is one of the questions guiding the protagonist in García Elizondo’s 2019 debut novel, evocatively titled Una cita con la Lady, which follows a drug addict who is ready to leave the world of the living behind. Tired of losing and hoping never to return, he travels to his final destination, the small village of El Zapotal, accompanied by the last of his opium and heroin stash. The novel explores the blurred and unidentifiable boundaries between life and death, and as the protagonist wanders through the village, unresolved heartbreak from the past imposes itself, complicating the execution of his ultimate project. Awarded the City of Barcelona Award and previously translated into Greek, Arabic, Italian, French and Portuguese, Una cita con la Lady was published in June 2024 as Last Date in El Zapotal, in the translation of Robin Myers and from the Edinburgh-based Charco Press.

It was a pleasure to talk to Mateo García Elizondo, who is a big fan of Asymptote himself. Our conversation ranged across literature, screenwriting, meditation, the richness of the Spanish language, influences, and the privilege to work on non-commissioned projects.

Elisabeth Goemans (EG): Congratulations on the English translation of your novel, Last Date in El Zapotal. It’s not the first time you have been translated.

Mateo Garcia Elizondo (MGE): Thank you. Yes, the novel has been translated into various languages now, but the only ones I have been able to read are the French, English, and Italian—as well as the Portuguese version that came out not long ago.

EG: How is your relationship with Robin Myers, your English translator?

MGE: Well, with the French and the English translation I could meddle a little bit more with the translation, and it was a great pleasure to do that with Robin. I mean, Robin does all the heavy lifting, but I always tell her what I like. Sometimes she accepts my suggestions, other times she does not. And I always trust the translator. READ MORE…

Eat Their Words: On the Translator’s Appetites

January 6, 2025  |  in Essays  |  by Xiao Yue Shan

Stories and poems can be shared, but voices cannot; languages can be shared, but consciousnesses cannot.

In this essay, translation is explored as a physical, materialist phenomenon. In comparing the craft of language-transformation to the corporeality of eating and digesting, the role of the translator is expanded beyond a secondary conduit of texts, and posited instead as the owners of a unique, private production.

In her Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Susan Sontag coined the word ‘cosmophagy’, defined as ‘the devouring of the world by consciousness.’ That neologism, physiological instead of cerebral, underscores the appetite so inherent within the act of thinking, a hunger that represents the need to absorb and to take in, but also to digest and to integrate—the outside brought inside, the other made into the self. In considering the relationship between eating and reading, the most common notion is the idea of literature as somehow satiating, or the insistence that books are an essential part of livelihood—but beyond the simplistic conjecture of text as food, correlating the two human acts invites the assertion of the self as a desiring presence, and the body as a capacious methodology of transformation. By affecting our hunger onto the world, we claim a type of ownership over it, and once the materials of the world enter the realm of our senses, they change—becoming irreducibly ours.

Translators are likely to be familiar with this textual ingestion, having spent more time chewing on their words than most. After taking their meal, they are the ones who make a home for the text, carrying it for months or years, witnessing it seep into their own voice, their own imagination. ‘A translator is a professional schizophrenic. . .’ the Hungarian writer Zoltán Pék stated. ‘He is operating in an elevated state of mind,’ which is to say, a state of harbouring multiple minds. When they are humble, many translators will use terms such as I hope or I tried to speak of their work, positioning themselves as simply one flawed interpreter, seeking the approval of the authors that still live inside their heads. This lack of vanity is essential to the craft, which often forces oneself to confront one’s lack of knowledge, fluency, originality, or ability—but it must also work to emphasise the singular inventiveness of each individual translational attempt. The author may be in there, a wonderfully influential companion, but at the end of the day, it’s still your head. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

December 13, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Ibrahim Fawzy, José García Escobar, and Thuy Dinh

The latest from Vietnam, Central America, and the ALTA conference!

This week, read about the annual conference of the American Literary Translators Association, the new pathways Vietnamese writers and translators are helping to pave in the Anglosphere, as well as the new accolades, conversations, and impact of Central American literatures.

Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large, reporting for Vietnam and the Vietnamese Diaspora

Han Kang’s recent Nobel win has spurred lively discussions among writers in Vietnam and the diasporic community on how to sustain and promote Vietnamese literature beyond its national borders. Thiên Kim, co-founder of UK-based Major Books, believes it’s not a quality issue but the scarcity of works being translated into English that has prevented Asian literature from being more widely appreciated.

To rectify the situation, Major Books has teamed up with talented translators Nguyễn Bình, Đinh Ngọc Mai, and Khải Nguyễn, among others, to present a “well-rounded portrait of Vietnam while preserv[ing] the integrity and … originality of each [translated] work.” Titles to be published in 2025-2026 range from a new translation of a beloved national epic (Nguyễn Du’s The Tale of Kiều), a broad satire on sexual mores during the French colonial era (Vũ Trọng Phụng’s Making a Whore), a gritty exploration of contemporary LGBQT culture (Vũ Đình Giang’s Parallel), to a biting social critique via the lens of folklore and existentialism (The Young Die Old by Nguyễn Bình Phương). READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

November 22, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Christina Chatzitheodorou, MARGENTO, and René Esaú Sánchez

The latest from Greece, Spain, Romania, and Mexico!

This week’s literary round-up include groundbreaking publications of Romanian literature, what to look forward to in the upcoming annual Guadalajara International Book Fair, and the passing of a Greek lyrical poet. Read on to find out more.

MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Spain and Romania

It’s the age of rediscoveries and revisitings in contemporary Romanian literature, both at home and abroad. In his singular indefatigable and all-inclusive manner, past Asymptote contributor Felix Nicolau has launched the first volume of the monumental anthology Grandes escritores rumanos (Great Romanian Writers), previously presented on our blog. The event took place on November 15 in Madrid at the Romanian Cultural Institute, where Nicolau presented the collection together with co-editor Alba Diz Villanueva.

While introducing Romanian classics to Spanish-speaking audiences—and thus marking a huge milestone in Romanian literature in translation, the impressive release has received accolades regarding its unique approach and framework amidst the entire Spanish-speaking literary world, specifically regarding its multifaceted richness fusing translation, literary commentary, didactic utility, and cross-cultural interpollination.

Felix Nicolau has also been involved in what is perhaps this year’s most sensational rediscovery in Romanian literature: De dor de sufletul lui Andersen (On Missing Andersen’s Spirit), a collection of fairy tales by Nichita Stănescu, published by Rentrop & Straton. Nicolau authored the preface to the text, and recently contributed an astute review of the same book to the literary magazine Astra. Famously known for his neo-modernist poetry of intriguing sophisticated imagery and memorable, abstractly paradoxical formulations that both stylistically revolutionized Romanian letters in the 1970s and implicitly opposed Communist social realism, Nichita Stănescu has been rediscovered in a staggeringly surprising capacity. These one-of-a-kind fairy tales verge on potentially best-selling children’s literature without relinquishing the radically imaginative innovativeness and the hypnotizing oracular diction of his poetry, with Nicolau placing them at the crossroads of Perrault, Saint-Exupéry, and Terry Pratchett. Additionally, argues Nicolau, there is so much more to these tales, as they are informed by avant-garde poetics and retain a cultural relevance within the digital age. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: November 2024

November 11, 2024  |  in Reviews  |  by Eva Dunsky, Jonathon Atkinson, Rachel Stanyon, and Xiao Yue Shan

Discover new work from Denmark, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, Argentina, Japan, France, and Taiwan!

In this month’s review of newly released titles, we’re looking at works from Denmark, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, Argentina, Japan, France, and Taiwan. From a haunting volume of ecopoetics to the first book in an acclaimed metaphysical septology, from powerful anticolonial verses to a meditation on the art of translating, read on for some of the best work being released now in English!

Balle CALCULATION vol1 rgb

On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland, New Directions, 2024

Review by Rachel Stanyon

After an unremarkable day spent on a business trip in Paris, Tara Selter is enjoying breakfast in her hotel when it strikes her that it is yesterday again. In the first book of Solvej Balle’s seven-part On The Calculation of Volume, Tara’s eighteenth of November begins repeating itself.

What possibilities exist upon the dawning of an old day? Are there wrongs to right, missed opportunities to seize, risks to take or temper? Balle’s heroine does not seem to perceive any such problems or desires; she likes her fairly routine job as an antiquarian book dealer, and works alongside her husband, Thomas, whom she loves. She does not seem to want for nor regret anything, and has blind faith in Thomas, who believes her when she tells him about her repeating days (at least the first umpteen times).

So why has her time “fallen apart”, and what can be gleaned from observing this procession of almost identical days—slowly, meticulously, rhythmically—through the diary Tara keeps? (In this version of eternal return, some of Tara’s physical imprints on the world remain indelible.) Book I details a year (the first of many?) spent haunting the all-too familiar patterns of her husband, all the while lost in loneliness and musing on the volume of her existence. Is she an all-consuming “beast, a pest” or a “tiny monster in an immense space”? READ MORE…

Languages have their secrets: A Conversation with Mardonio Carballo

October 16, 2024  |  in Interviews  |  by René Esaú Sánchez

...poets are simply those who pay attention, observing what happens, and find a way to tell it…

Poet, journalist, editor, actor, broadcaster, producer, translator, and Nahua activist Mardonio Carballo recently published La canción de las flores, a book that brings together forty-nine poems printed on paper made from corn leaves and vine, published simultaneously in Nahuatl-Spanish, Nahuatl-English, and Nahuatl-French. In this interview, originally held in Spanish, I spoke with Mardonio Carballo about the experience of writing in Spanish and Nahuatl, the relation of memory and language, and the role of translation in preserving an indigenous language.

René Esaú Sánchez (RES): I was reading some of the poems you wrote in La Canción de las Flores, and many of them are quite synesthetic. So I wanted to ask: what smells, sensations, or tastes do you experience when writing poetry?

Mardonio Carballo (MC): This latest collection is atypical. I had resisted for a long time the theme of nature—this tradition of “Flor y Canto” that is always associated with Nahuatl poetry. To a certain extent, it annoyed me. On this occasion, unlike my previous collections, which have been more combative, expressing Mexico’s painful reality, I chose to step away from that theme of pain, blood, and death. In another book, I asked myself how much the dead weigh, for instance. But I realized the same thing happened to me years ago when making documentaries. I no longer wanted to focus on journalists, activists, and the same topics. So, I embarked on a journey to film a series of documentaries called We Insist on Hope. It turned out that all those defending land, water, and forests were either threatened with death or had been harmed in some way, which led me to a reflection: the one that guides this collection.

Just as there are no languages without people to speak them, there are no territories without flowers. That premise is what nourishes this collection, and yes, the physical book—the way it was designed—makes it seem like the typography changes, like everything is in motion. I believe it pays homage to the flowers, birds, and trees. After the whole COVID situation, I was left with the feeling that we were suddenly writing poems that were too profound, sometimes inaccessible and incomprehensible to most people. So in this collection, I sought the ease of understanding. In fact, one of the lines that deeply inspires me is from a Charles Simic poem: “I write so that dogs can understand me.” That line struck me. Because at some point, we start using grandiose words that make us seem special, fantastic, intellectual… but to me, poets are simply those who pay attention, observing what happens, and find a way to tell it. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

October 4, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, René Esaú Sánchez, and Sofija Popovska

The latest from Mexico, North Macedonia, and the Philippines!

In this week’s round-up of literary news from around the world, our editors report on an exciting translation-centric colloquium in Mexico, a prestigious award going to a new translation of one of North Macedonia’s most canonical novels, and the Frankfurt Book Fair’s spotlighting of the Philippines in its 2025 edition—a choice that has met resistance from local publishers due to the fair’s Zionist sympathies.

René Esaú Sánchez, Editor-at-Large, reporting for Mexico

They say that no matter what you do, there is always a saint from which you can ask for help. In the case of translators, that is Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin. Following the Council of Trent, his translation became the official Latin Bible in the western hemisphere.

With this in mind, the fourth Coloquio de Traducción Literaria San Jerónimo (Saint Jerome Literary Translation Colloquium) took place last week in Veracruz, Mexico. The event was dedicated to fully immersing participants in the art of translation and fostering discussions on what it truly means to translate. It was organized by the Culture Office of Veracruz and the independent publishing company Aquelarre Ediciones, which also sponsors a prize dedicated to literary translation.

Among the participants were notable figures such as Fabián Espejel, the recent winner of the Bellas Artes Margarita Michelena Literary Translation Award; Mario Murguía, who won the same prize last year; José Miguel Barajas, the translator of Mallarmé into Spanish; and José Luis Rivas, a poet who has translated works by Derek Walcott, John Donne, Ezra Pound, William Shakespeare, and T.S. Eliot. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

September 13, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Ibrahim Fawzy, Miranda Mazariegos, and Wambua Muindi

The latest from Kenya, Egypt, and Mexico!

In this edition of our column for global literary news, Arabic titles are celebrated with the National Book Award’s longlist of Translated Literature, a vital literacy program in Kenya travels to a women’s prison, and a new cinematic adaptation of one of Mexico’s most important novels premiers at the Toronto International Film Festival. Read on to find out more!

Ibrahim Fawzy, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Egypt

Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, literature emerges as a beacon of hope. Now translated into English, three Arabic literary works have been longlisted for the prestigious National Book Award for Translated Literature, standing as testaments to the resilience of the human spirit. Nasser Abu Srour’s The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on the Meaning of Hope and Freedom, translated by Luke Leafgren, is a poignant memoir recounting his decades-long imprisonment in Israeli jails. Through the lens of his imagination, Abu Srour transforms confinement into a realm of boundless possibility, exploring themes of love, justice, and the unwavering power of hope. The book’s evocative prose and its author’s unflinching honesty combine into a compelling narrative that has resonated with readers around the globe; interested readers can also see an excerpt published on Asymptote as a part of our All Eyes on Palestine column.

Additionally, Leri Price, a frequent contender for the National Book Award, has once again made the longlist with her translation of Samar Yazbek’s Where the Wind Calls Home (which Asymptote had selected for the February edition of our Book Club). This haunting novel delves into the complexities of human relationships and the devastating impact of war on individuals and communities. Another longlisted work is Bothayna al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library, co-translated by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain. This thought-provoking novel examines the censorship of literature and its profound implications for society. I’m so glad that Arabic literature is shining thanks to the fabulous work of its translators. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

September 6, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas and René Esaú Sánchez

The latest literary news from Mexico and the Philippines!

This week, our editors-at-large share reflections on prose from Mexico and an event on women in translation in New York. From the wise words of a beloved centenarian writer to a reading celebrating ‘minority’ languages, read on to find out more!

René Esaú Sánchez, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Mexico

“Prose is everything,” said Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale with cheeky irony. “I have a so-so relationship with poetry, but prose… it presents more challenges to me. Poetry is a matter of rhythm, of good or bad taste. But prose… prose is everything.”

Last year, Vitale reached the modest age of 100, and last week, with unparalleled lucidity, she inaugurated the Feria Internacional del Libro de las Universitarias y los Universitarios (Filuni), a book fair organized by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) for students, academics, publishers, and writers. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: August 2024

August 12, 2024  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Georgina Fooks, Matilde Ribeiro, and Sofija Popovska

New work from Mexico and Martinique!

In this month’s compilation of newly released titles, our editors take a close look at three works that cohere stylistic invention with unconstrained probings into reality. In a bold collection of psychogeography, Daniel Saldaña París vivifies the urban space as a transformative intersection of image and imagination. From Aimé Cesaire, one of the founders of négritude, an early dramatic work provides further insight into his potent discourse against colonial violence. And in the English-language debut of one of Latin America’s most vital political thinkers, a volume combining dialogue and essay introduces the essentiality of communal resistance in the thinking of Raquel Gutiérrez-Aguilar.

9781646222315

Planes Flying Over a Monster by Daniel Saldaña París, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney and Philip K. Zimmerman, Catapult, 2024

Review by Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large for North Macedonia

“The long poem of walking manipulates spatial organizations. . . It creates shadows and ambiguities within them. It inserts its multitudinous references and citations into them. . .” writes Michel de Certeau in his 1984 book, The Practice of Everyday Life. I thought of these words immediately as I immersed myself in the shifting landscapes of Planes Flying Over a Monster, a collection of ten essays by Daniel Saldaña París, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney and Philip K. Zimmerman. In writing about (and moving through) Montreal, Havana, Mexico City, Madrid, and other places, Saldaña París engages in a transformative cartography, rearranging bits of metropolises in turn into a tangle of ruelles frequented by a secret writer; a map of zones where different types of drugs can be purchased; a junction between “three different groups playing the same son cubano tune at different rhythms on three different corners of the plaza”; and a stretch of space-time existing only momentarily within a locked gaze between a shy, adolescent cult member and his adult self. Tracing the connections between places, people, and events, Saldaña París creates a sense of communion with the world that is at times uneasy, yet always shot through with radical tenderness and a rare species of honesty—the kind that doesn’t confuse itself with the truth. This self-awareness, rooted in the memoir aspect of the collection, intensifies the realism that the genre of nonfiction always purports to provide, yet only occasionally delivers.

The collection’s closing essay, “Assistants of the Sun,” is also the beginning of the story—chronologically speaking. In it, we meet a young Saldaña París, dragged into joining a cult by his father and uncle. The sect’s activities happen during nature retreats, and include rituals of varying extremity—anything from walking in a neat line to a live burial. Saldaña París is forced to confront these memories years later, watching footage of these events while sitting with his partner Catherine in a borrowed Brooklyn apartment—an arrangement he mentions multiple times throughout the essay, as though attempting to anchor himself amidst the flood of disturbing recollections. He faces the past with striking empathy—remembering his father as “softness personified, mildly alcoholic, holding down three jobs . . . and a radical advocate of tenderness,” despite his having roped his son into a scam. This compassionate clarity, spanning all ten essays, is consonant with the author’s mission—relayed to him by an extra-terrestrial during a cult activity—to “help the sun to illuminate the world.” READ MORE…