Posts filed under 'feminism'

WIT Month: An Interview with Ginny Tapley Takemori

August 24, 2020  |  in Interviews  |  by Xiao Yue Shan

. . . a book is like a musical score, and readers are the musicians; a book is only complete with their performances.

As we approach the end of a wonderfully celebratory Women in Translation month, Asymptote is proud to present a week of content featuring women writers and translators who are working at the top of their game. Since the first WIT Month in 2014, advances and improvements have been made for women working in global letters, but the significance of continuing to read and translate women’s voices remains. The act of reading women is indistinguishable from the act of reading the world—a truth we must continue to recognize.

First up in our spotlight series is translator from the Japanese, Ginny Tapley Takemori. Though Japanese literature is a landscape built by men and women alike, the nation-specific politics and postulations of gender makes for thought-provoking discussion as one examines the truths and concepts reflected in its literature. An advocate for women translators and writers in Japan, Tapley Takemori has translated award-winning texts by Sayaka Murata, Kyoko Nakajima, Kaori Fujino, among many others. In the following dialogue, she speaks with blog editor Xiao Yue Shan about her prolific endeavours of translating such vital, well-loved work.

Takemori

Xiao Yue Shan (XYS): While there isn’t necessarily a conspicuous lack of literature by women in Japan, the country’s publishing market does seem entrenched in a gendered hierarchy, with books by women largely being marketed towards and read by women. Has this been your experience in navigating Japan’s literature? And if so, do you think it has affected the way women in Japan write?

Ginny Tapley Takemori (GTT): I don’t think there is a lack of books by women—on the contrary, there are lots of women writers! A lot of women working in publishing as well, for that matter, and I don’t really notice works by women writers being particularly marketed towards and read by women. I wonder what the stats for that might reveal? There may be some truth in it, given the historical development of women’s literature in Japan. From my own present observations, however, I’d say it’s true in certain cases; for instance, Boys’ Love manga is written by women for women, but it’s super niche. In 2017, Waseda Bungaku published their whopping tome Joseigo (女性号, Women’s Edition) and it sold out in a week! I’m not convinced that only women bought it. One thing that is clear is that women are winning the big literary prizes (about par with men for the Akutagawa and the Naoki). And I don’t get the impression that these prizewinning authors are writing specifically for women at all.

XYS: Yes, I definitely agree that women have quite a prominent, well-regarded presence in Japanese literature—arguably more so than in most other countries! Yet as you said, there are certain indications in the historical development of Japanese literature that subject matter is ingrained with gendered notions: women engaging more with the occupations of day-to-day life, men with politics and metaphysical matters.

GTT: That has been the case until not so long ago, but I’m not sure the boundaries are so clear nowadays. There’s an enormous variety in women’s writing now in terms of genre, writing style, and subject matter. I don’t think women writers are content to be confined to any particular subject or style, and in some cases, they explode these boundaries in quite spectacular and innovative ways, like Sayaka Murata with Earthlings. Some also deliberately revisit literature of the past, like Hiromi Kawakami in The Ten Loves of Nishino (trans. Allison Markin Powell), harking back to The Tale of Genji. There are critics who claim that contemporary writers are nowhere near the standard of the greats like Mishima, Soseki, et al (all men, naturally), but I have a different view of literature myself.

XYS: Would you say that one of the aims of Strong Women, Soft Power—the collective you co-founded with fellow translators Allison Markin Powell and Lucy North—is to direct a spotlight on women writers in Japan, and in doing so, direct the country towards gender equality, as well as greater awareness and resistance to sexism?

GTT: Strong Women, Soft Power is first and foremost a translators’ collective, and our aim is to give Japanese women writers a voice to speak for themselves through translation. It is not our intention to impose any forms of feminism or feminist critique on them; we simply aim to create awareness of their work and highlight the imbalance in the translation of men and women writers (a phenomenon not exclusive to Japan). At the same time, we offer a platform for promoting work by women writers and to some extent for women translators, although we do collaborate regularly with our male colleagues too. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 31, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Filip Noubel, Julia Sherwood, and Nestor Gomez

This week's latest news from Czech Republic, Moldova, and El Salvador!

The engines of global literature churn on amidst a summer full of suspensions, and our editors on the ground are here to bring you the latest in their developments. Though the Czech Republic and El Salvador mourn the losses of two literary heroes, their legacies are apparent in the multiple peregrinations of their works, continuing. Furthermore: an exciting new Moldovan translation and a resurfaced scandal implicating the widely-lauded Milan Kundera.

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Czech Republic

Poet and essayist Petr Král, who died on June 17 at the age of seventy-eight, was not only an original poet continuing the surrealist tradition, but also a distinguished translator who moved freely between his native Czech and French, the language he adopted after emigrating to Paris in 1968, following the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Král’s translations introduced key poets of the French avant-garde to Czech readers, and the three anthologies he translated and published also helped to put Czech poetry on the map in France. After 1989, he moved back to Prague, and in 2016 was honoured with the Czech State Prize for Literature, while in 2019 he was awarded the Grand Prix de la Francophonie by the Académie française. His loss is mourned equally in Prague and in Paris.

Just over ten years ago, another great Czech-born writer who has made Paris his home, Milan Kundera, was embroiled in a huge controversy after an article in the Czech weekly Respekt alleged that, as a student and an ardent communist, the future writer had denounced another young man to the secret police, resulting in the latter’s arrest and years spent in labour camps. These allegations, which Kundera has always strenuously denied, reared their ugly head again last month, when Czech-American writer Jan Novák published Kundera’s unauthorized biography. As the title suggests, Kundera. Český život a doba (Kundera. His Czech Life and Times) concentrates on the writer’s early life and career before his emigration to France and purports to lift the veil further on “the moral relativist’s” infatuation with communism. The book has caused quite a stir, with some critics hailing it as well-researched and highly readable, while others, including journalist Petr Fischer and author and former Asymptote contributor Radka Denemarková, regard it as little more than a hatchet job, questioning Novák’s use of secret police files as a reliable source of information. Milan Kundera has maintained silence.

On the other hand, underground writer and philosopher Egon Bondy (1930–2007), the enfant terrible of Czech literature and lyricist for the punk band Plastic People of the Universe, never denounced his left-wing beliefs and took revelations of his collaboration with the secret police on the chin. In protest against the splitting of Czechoslovakia, Bondy moved to the Slovak capital, Bratislava, where he devoted himself to the study and translation of Chinese philosophy. In 1997 he wrote his final book, inspired by the life of Lao Tzu. Dlouhé ucho (The Long Ear), which had long been considered lost, was finally published this May, thirteen years after Bondy’s death in a fire that broke out in his flat when he fell asleep with a burning cigarette. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

June 26, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Daniel Persia and Eva Wissting

Literary news from Brazil and Sweden!

As countries around the world are grappling around the walls of our new reality, their literatures respond in turn to the urgency of contemporary matters and the necessity of recognizing history. In this week’s dispatches, our editors report on publishers in Sweden taking on climate change and the world welcomes new translations of a canonical Brazilian author, among other noteworthy news. Read on to keep up!

Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden

Publisher Natur & Kultur announced in their most recent sustainability report that they aim to become Sweden’s first climate neutral book publisher. The goal is to become climate neutral within 2020, which means that firstly, they will do what they can to minimize climate changing emissions, and secondly, they will compensate for any emissions from their activities or production. Their printing house, located in Estonia, will switch to ecofriendly electricity and they are investigating how to minimize transportation within the publisher’s business. Authors published by Natur & Kultur include historian and former Swedish Academy Permanent Secretary Peter Englund (The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War) and writer, columnist and August Prize winner Lena Andersson (Wilful Disregard and Acts of Infidelity).

Another reminder of the importance of action on climate change arrived recently with the fall edition of the triennial book catalogue from the Swedish book industry organization Svensk Bokhandel. This fall, Sweden’s most prominent environmental activist, and possibly most well-known person overall right now, Greta Thunberg, is having another book published by Polaris Publishing. Last year, photographer Roger Turesson and journalist Alexandra Urisman Otto travelled with Thunberg through Europe and the United States and the book is their depiction of the young environmentalist. Previously published works by Thunberg includes Our House is on Fire, written together with her parents and sister, and No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, which is a collection of her speeches.

Daniel Persia, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Brazil

As Brazil continues to grapple with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, its literary community perseveres. With the recent cancelation of the 26th International Book Fair of São Paulo, originally slated for October 30 to November 8, 2020, publishers, writers, and reviewers have carried the conversation to online platforms such as YouTube, Facebook Live, and Instagram. Despite current flight restrictions and limitations on travel, Brazilian literature continues to cross new frontiers, garnering new readers across the globe. READ MORE…

How Do We Remember Translators? The Many Lives of Barbara Bray

June 11, 2020  |  in Essays  |  by Nathan H. Dize

There must be a way of acknowledging the care that Bray brought to her translations while simultaneously reckoning with their faults.

Barbara Bray was a British translator and recipient of the PEN Translation Prize in 1986. In addition to having translated leading French authors of her time, including Marguerite Duras, Julia Kristeva, and the correspondence of George Sand, she also translated works by two renowned female Guadeloupian writers: Simone Schwarz-Bart and Maryse Condé. Though her work has undergone criticism—notably by Condé’s husband and translator, Richard Philcox in an recent interview with us at Asymptote—the importance of her legacy and contributions to global literature, as Nathan H. Dize proposes in the following essay, should not be undermined. 

In late December, I decided to go browsing at a used bookstore outside of Nashville to take a much-needed break from writing my dissertation. There are few things in this world more comforting than perusing the spines of books, never knowing what you might stumble upon. A few minutes into my trip, I found a hardcover copy of Maryse Condé’s Segu, translated by the late Barbara Bray. The dust jacket was pristine and its cover depicted a dying African man surrounded by his family beneath a pulpy font. I instantly knew that I had to buy it, having recently talked about the novel’s translator with a friend. Unfortunately, Barbara Bray’s name appears nowhere on the cover of Segu—not on its first edition or any subsequent editions—which led me to wonder, how do we remember translators when they are gone? What becomes of the many lives they’ve lived through the words of others? Since that day in the warehouse-sized bookstore in Middle Tennessee, I’ve considered how Bray’s translations of Maryse Condé and Simone Schwarz-Bart, Guadeloupe’s most prolific writers, might help us to remember her life and her contribution to Caribbean literature in translation.

***

Barbara Bray (née Jacobs) was born along with her identical twin, Olive, on November 24, 1924 in Maida Vale, not far from Regent’s Park in London. She was educated close to Maida Vale at the Preston Manor Grammar School in Brent and later studied English, French, and Italian at Girton College, Cambridge. After her university studies, Barbara married John Bray, a former Royal Air Force pilot, and they went to live together in Egypt, where Barbara took a position as an English teacher at the University of Alexandria in Cairo. In 1953, the couple moved back to London, where Barbara began a new job as a script editor for the BBC. In his obituary for Barbara Bray in the Journal of Beckett Studies, John Knowlson recalls conversations with Bray about her time at the BBC, when she and other producers had to fight with BBC executives and department heads to air avant-garde radio plays and programs, such as Harold Pinter’s radio plays. Three years before Barbara Bray left the BCC in 1961, her husband John died in a car accident, leaving her widowed and tasked with raising their two daughters, Francesca and Julia. After John Bray’s passing, Barbara met Samuel Beckett and the two began a multi-decade love affair in Paris that coincided with Bray’s entrée into the world of translation. READ MORE…

“It’s a floating world”: Yasuhiro Yotsumoto on Japanese Poetics

June 8, 2020  |  in Interviews  |  by Xiao Yue Shan

I’m very much interested now in the type of poet—not only in Japan but outside as well—who tries to cultivate resistance.

The life and work of poet Yasuhiro Yotsumoto is a testament to the conviction and omnipresence of poetics, profuse in every aspect of human life. In nearly twenty volumes of poetry and criticism, he has interrogated, in verse and prose, the reality and abstractions of family, romance, corporate fiscal structuring, Japanese linguistics, culture both global and insular, a struggle against cancer, and, in doing so, has revealed something essential about poetry as it coheres with all other ideas and facts. Having displaced himself from Japan by the means of an extremely successful career in business—something he calls his “real” job, despite every indication in his manner of speaking that he considers it a mere occupation—Yotsumoto has lived in Munich since 1994, and at the time of our meeting, has just begun a very tedious and significant transition back into Japanese daily life and society.

Despite meeting all the qualifications for a writer defined by (self-imposed) exile and exodus, Yotsumoto has cultivated a significant reputation in Japanese letters. As editor of the admired literary quarterly Beagle, host of the poetry podcast Poetry Talks, Japanese national editor of Poetry International, and diligent translator of poets ranging from Li Bo to Simon Armitage, he admitted casually, without any pretension or arrogance, that he is now considered somewhat of an insider (a word that he would go on to elaborate upon) within literary circles. We conversed in English, which he professed that he is able to “speak for about two hours, then the battery runs out and I start speaking nonsense.”

I met him on the very day the state of emergency—enforced within Japan due to the COVID-19 epidemic—was due to be lifted. In Yamashita Park, plentiful with roses and the bare shoulders and legs emblematic of spring-turning-summer, we ate ice cream cones overlooking the waters of Tokyo Bay. The conversation was peppered with his generous laughter, silences full of thought, and interruptions typical of the world, busy and vivid, brilliantly alive.

Xiao Yue Shan (XYS): It’s impressive to be able to balance—what I imagine to be—a very heavy workload on your day job with such a prolific poetry career.

Yasuiro Yotsumoto (YY): That’s right. I wouldn’t be able to do that if it was prose—novels, or something. But poetry is okay; I can finish it before breakfast every morning. And I write everyday.

XYS: I find that most Japanese writers have this very regulated schedule.

YY: Well, I always wanted to keep this balance. It was a challenge I put upon myself, the balance between “real life” and writing. And I made that conscious decision as I graduated from university, that I could take a very cultural job—copywriter, or something—but I somehow decided not to do that, and instead I pursued two separate worlds.

XYS: Mutually exclusive.

YY: Well, mutually exclusive in terms of lifestyle, but my first book was about corporate finance theory. I went to the University of Pennsylvania and got my MBA in corporate finance in my twenties, and I wrote a book of poetry by applying such theories of the Black-Scholes option model, etc., to describe Japanese society at that time—which was peaking economically, and everyone was sensing that the burst of the bubble was not so far away, yet we kept going and going and going. That was an overlap. So I had always been an outsider amongst Japanese poets; I live outside [of Japan], and I write about things that have never been touched before. I try to bring in this kind of prosaic, very banal, everyday subject into the domain of poetry. READ MORE…

Soft Power: Gabriella Page-Fort on Editing Oksana Zabuzhko’s Your Ad Could Go Here

May 21, 2020  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Allison Braden

. . . both a fairy-tale reverie and a feminist call to action; the book offers a window on twenty-first-century Ukraine and on ourselves.

One could not conceive of contemporary Ukrainian literature without Oksana Zabuzhko’s wide-ranging body of work coming to the mind’s forefront. With volumes of fiction, poetry, and essays to her name, her remarkable fusion of lyric and philosophy has earned her the unceasing admiration of both critics and the general public. We were enormously excited to present her latest English-language work, the short story compilation Your Ad Could Go Here, as our April Book Club selection. The eight tales are ripe with her signature eye for detail and acute insight into the heart of human matters, and signify the triumph of an author whose trusted voice remains her greatest tool in combating themes both personal and political. In the following interview, Allison Braden speaks to the volume’s editor, Gabriella Page-Fort, about the significance of Zabuzhko’s oeuvre and the impact of these powerful stories. 

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page!  

Allison Braden (AB): How did you go about selecting and arranging the stories in this collection? What sorts of criteria, aesthetic or otherwise, did you consider? 

Gabriella Page-Fort (GP-F): With topics ranging from Ukraine’s Orange Revolution to sexual empowerment and attractive tennis instructors, Your Ad Could Go Here is both wildly entertaining and intensely provocative. Oksana decided which stories to include and in what order, but translators Halyna Hryn, Nina Murray, and Askold Melnyczuk were also part of the conversation about how best to order these stories. The collection’s three central themes—sisterhood, truth, and aging—strike a balance between the personal and the political. The result is powerful: both a fairy-tale reverie and a feminist call to action; the book offers a window on twenty-first-century Ukraine and on ourselves. What would it feel like to have power? What structures that define our lives are worthy of our submission, and what are the true risks of, say, admitting weakness truthfully to a man?

AB: What was it like working with a diverse team of translators? Did you edit their work to create a cohesive narrative voice throughout, or did you welcome stylistic discrepancies from one story to the next?

GP-F: We worked with five different translators for this collection, each bringing their own element of style and theory to the text. This was a really exciting creative challenge. Oksana wrote these stories in a variety of voices, so a single tone for the whole collection would be inappropriate, but we also wanted to make sure the book flowed nicely. Rather than undoing the translators’ elegant individual contributions, Nina, acting as volume editor and an expert in Ukrainian translations and Oksana’s work, and I, with an eye toward an English-language reader, focused on developing patterns, such as consistent logic in punctuation choice, to result in a smooth read without compromising style or the diverse range of voices here.  READ MORE…

Announcing our April Book Club Selection: Your Ad Could Go Here by Oksana Zabuzhko

April 30, 2020  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Allison Braden

The eight stories that make up the book . . . conspire to place the collection right at the border where our world gives way to magic.

In a collection that coheres pivotal ideas about womanhood and history with impeccable craft, Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko has once again impressed her brilliance upon the English-speaking world with the newly released Your Ad Could Go Here. At Asymptote, we are incredibly proud to present this volume of stunning short stories as our Book Club selection for April. Known equally for her adeptness in criticism and philosophy as her accomplishments in poetry and fiction, Zabuzhko’s refined perspective on Ukrainian identity and feminism, enlivening her characters and narratives, is a gift for readers everywhere.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page! 

Your Ad Could Go Here by Oksana Zabuzhko, translated from the Ukrainian, edited by Nina Murray, Amazon Crossing, 2020

As I read Oksana Zabuzhko’s newest collection of short stories, Your Ad Could Go Here, I recalled the scene in Paradise Lost when Eve, new to the world, is startled to encounter her own reflection in a pool of water:

As I bent down to look, just opposite
A shape within the watery gleam appeared,
Bending to look on me: I started back,
It started back; but pleased I soon returned,
Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love: There I had fixed
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warned me; ‘What thou seest,
‘What there thou seest, fair Creature, is thyself

Like Milton’s Eve, Zabuzhko’s protagonists—invariably women—turn their attention inward, without losing sight of their physical selves. They find strength, power, faults—and a wellspring of self-love, despite being riven by the natural contradictions of a full life. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: April 2020

April 13, 2020  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Austyn Wohlers, Clémence Lucchini, Jacqueline Leung, and Sarah Moore

New literature from Algeria, Guadeloupe, Italy, and Japan!

In the newly ruptured world, the questions that arise all seem perplexingly novel. It is somewhat of a tonic, then, that one turns to literature to find that the queries that confound us now are more specific reiterations of questions that have plagued humanity for a long, long time. What is freedom? How do we persist through the turmoil of our nations? What does the past mean for the present? And, perhaps most pertinently, what survives? In this month’s selections in translated literature, four astounding works from around the world encounter and contend with these problems in their singular styles. Below, discover a passionate novel about a real-life Algerian bookseller, a Guadeloupe-set fiction that intermingles personal and national revolution, the latest English-language volume in Roberto Calasso’s grand series on human civilization, and a Japanese literary sensation which contends with feminine pain and perseverance.

our riches

Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi, translated from the French by Chris Andrews, New Directions, 2020

Review by Clémence Lucchini, Educational Arm Assistant

Though one cannot truly stress all the qualities of Our Riches, Kaouther Adimi’s first translated novel into English by Chris Andrews, within the limits of a book review, Adimi has certainly proved that she is able to convey Edmond Charlot’s life long passion for books in less than two hundred pages. In this historical fiction, recognized with two French literary awards, Adimi finds a new way to portray her native Algeria: through Edmond Charlot’s many literary endeavors.

For those who do not know Edmond Charlot (I was among that group before reading this book), he left a great gift to the publishing world by being Camus’ first publisher, by publishing under-represented authors, and last but not least, by pioneering the design of book covers as we know it today in Western Europe, referred to as “the talk of the publishing world” in Adimi’s work. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Excerpts from I Am Not That Body by Verónica González Arredondo

April 7, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Allison A. deFreese

here no one/ is watching, not even God

In this week’s Translation Tuesday, poet Verónica González Arredondo bears witness to the plague of gender violence in Mexico in this excerpt from her forthcoming chapbook, I Am Not That Body. Our narrator speaks from a place beyond the remains of her body, recounting with chilling forensic detail the horrors she has witnessed and endured. From this ghostly viewpoint, the speaker refuses the anonymity, objectification, and cultural silence mandated by Mexican officials and the popular media, leading us to the horrifying and heart-breaking final stanzas where our speaker informs her family—and the reader—the she is not a statistic, or a faded memory, or a voiceless body. This excerpt, sublime in its masterful use of religious imagery, metaphor, and concise, almost staccatoed lines, is a necessary and timely read for understanding the recent wave of protests against femicide in Mexico. 

I Am Not That Body

When the night yawns
there are rows of teeth in its mouth
that pierce every bone in the earth

 

 

violence of a white handkerchief covers my mouth
I don’t scream
I don’t breathe
all my memories
will lose their tongue
I will become another,
identical to the voice I never recognized
I scream in order to wake up in another dream
but the dream has gone missing READ MORE…

The Necessity of Translating Women: Monica Manolachi Interviewing Helen Vassallo and Olga Castro

February 12, 2020  |  in Interviews  |  by Monica Manolachi

If women are left out of culture, then the very notion of culture is itself impoverished.

When participants registered for the inaugural Translating Women Conference (October 31–November 1, 2019) at the Institute for Modern Languages Research in London, UK, they probably did not yet know that October 31 would become “Brexit Day.” Fortunately, Brexit was postponed, and when some of the delegates arrived in London, they saw a sign in front of a restaurant: “The year is 2192. The British Prime Minister visits Brussels to ask for an extension on Brexit. No one remembers where this tradition came from, but it attracts many tourists every year.” Over two days, a potentially isolationist “historical day” gave way to a fruitful international dialogue focused on translation and women writers from many parts of the world, forging connections and understanding in a time of division and uncertainty.

In the following conversation, Monica Manolachi, Helen Vassallo, and Olga Castro—co-organisers of the Translating Women Conference—speak about the meaning of the hashtag #BeMoreOlga, the many conference highlights, reading books in translation, and explain why feminism and translation are connected movements that have the potential to fully open up the Anglosphere to world literature.

Monica Manolachi (MM): Helen Vassallo and Olga Castro, you co-hosted the first Translating Women Conference at London’s Institute of Modern Languages Research on October 31 and November 1, 2019. On this occasion, participants received pins with the hashtag #BeMoreOlga. What issues does this hashtag address?

Helen Vassallo (HV): This stemmed from an opinion piece I wrote after the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded the delayed 2018 prize to Olga Tokarczuk and the 2019 prize to Peter Handke. Apart from the controversy in awarding the prize to Handke (a decision I found ill-judged, to say the least), I was incensed by the way in which the chair of the prize committee casually and erroneously justified the paucity of women laureates in the prize’s history by saying that “now” there are many great women writers. This only compounds the problem of women’s invisibility: suggesting that women hadn’t featured significantly because they weren’t there or weren’t “great” assumes that awards are based only on merit and not on visibility. I took issue with both the androcentric and the Eurocentric approach to choosing winners: I agree that Tokarczuk was a great choice, but the committee had previously stated that they were looking further afield than Europe, and then both prizes went to Europeans. It’s almost like saying: “well we looked, but there wasn’t anything good enough,” which is exactly what I mean about the myth of meritocracy. There wasn’t any real, demonstrable evidence that the prize committee had scrutinised its own policies, just empty rhetoric. And it was ironic that they commended Tokarczuk’s work for “crossing boundaries as a form of life”; I thought that they could take heed of that for calling into question their own criteria and approach—hence my suggestion that they “Be More Olga.” That was the specific context, but generally, “Be More Olga” stands as a call to action for all of us to be more open, to challenge borders and boundaries—whether literal or figurative—and to claim our place in a connected world. And to cap it all, Olga Tokarczuk herself was wearing one of our #BeMoreOlga badges at the Nobel Prize ceremony in December; I never dreamed that would happen! Tokarczuk’s Nobel lecture offers profound reflections on crossing borders, remaking our broken world, and challenging isolationism; it’s translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and Jennifer Croft, and expresses far more articulately than I could exactly what “Be More Olga” means. READ MORE…

The Harmony of Normalcy: Wang Anyi’s Fu Ping in Review

November 6, 2019  |  in Reviews  |  by Xiao Yue Shan

In the patchwork format by which this novel takes its shape, the reader is as involved and intimate with the surroundings as one of the characters.

Fu Ping by Wang Anyi, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt, Columbia University Press, 2019

First, do not create extraordinary circumstances or extraordinary characters. Second, do not use too much material. Three, do not over-stylize the language. Four, do not aspire to be singular.

These strange and somewhat alienating pillars of writing philosophy are passed on to us by Wang Anyi, one of China’s most accomplished and notorious authors. Famed for her meticulous portrayals of female tenacity, ordinary citizens, and everyday minutia, she is both stylistically audacious and devoted to her subjects. Fu Ping, her most recent novel to be translated into English, and taken into a wonderfully equal rendition by Howard Goldblatt, exemplifies the thematic and aesthetic constants prevalent in her oeuvre, while simultaneously creating an illumination of city and community that leaves remarkably deep impressions by way of its quietude. READ MORE…

“Guatemala has always produced great writers”: An Interview with Guatemalan Poet and Feminist Ana María Rodas

October 9, 2019  |  in Interviews  |  by José García Escobar

One day, poetry simply came out of me. One day, I was filled with poetry.

Wearing a thin sweater, a colorful scarf, and a dazzling smile, Ana María welcomed us to her house in Zone 15, Guatemala City. Outside it was pouring, much like when she presented her famed Poemas de la izquierda erótica (Poems from the Erotic Left), forty-six years ago. She offered us tea—“To fight back the cold,” she said, still smiling—and told us we had to do the interview in the living room, not upstairs, because, “There are books scattered everywhere; imagine, a lifetime spent collecting books.” And, yes, one can only imagine.

Ana María Rodas, born in 1937, is a veteran Guatemalan poet, journalist, and teacher. Her career spans more than sixty years. She has released close to twenty books, and her work has been translated into English, German, and Italian. In 1990, she simultaneously won the poetry and short story categories of the Juegos Florales de México, Centroamérica y el Caribe. In 2000, she won the prestigious Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature for her life’s work. She is also one of the leading figures of Guatemalan and Central American feminism. She has lived her whole life in Guatemala. And one cannot say this lightly. She grew up during the Jorge Ubico dictatorship (1931–1944), admired how the Guatemalan Revolution toppled Ubico in 1944, thrived during the so-called Ten Years of Spring, lamented the 1954 CIA-backed coup that removed the democratically elected, progressive president Jacobo Árbenz, and witnessed the atrocities of the Civil War (1960–1996). Many of her friends and colleagues were killed during that time. Alaíde Foppa, Irma Flaquer, and her dear friend, Luis de Lión, author of El tiempo principia en Xibalbá—considered one of the cornerstones of contemporary Central American literature. Even if she never picked up a rifle or joined the militarized resistance, her feminist struggle and intellectual defiance have influenced many generations.   

She’s not a cynic, though. Or bitter. She’s hopeful. “Even though we have a brute for president,” she says, “I believe in resisting.” And resisting, Ana María has done.

But as much as Ana María is grandmotherly and warm, as much as she’s a jokester and amicable, she is also analytical, astute, and disarmingly agile. She’s a force of nature, a rising tide, and an unmovable object. Her poetry is sensitive, electric, and subversive.

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What’s New in Translation: September 2019

September 16, 2019  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Alyea Canada, Ben Dreith, Chris Power, and Daniel Persia

Looking for what to read next? Our staff share their latest discoveries in new translations.

It is another month bringing us various gifts in the form of translated literatures, and our editors have selected the finest. Read below to find reviews of a short story collection detailing the various and complex natures of India, a haunting and poignant Swedish novel, unsettling tales from Israel, and a poignantly feminist work from Palestine.

ambai

A Kitchen in the Corner of the House by Ambai (C.S. Lakshmi), translated from the Tamil by Lakshmi Holmström, Archipelago Books, 2019

Review by Ben Dreith, Assistant Editor

C.S. Lakshmi, who writes in English and Tamil under the pseudonym Ambai, is a scion of post-revolutionary Indian feminism and women’s studies researcher who was raised and educated in Mumbai, Bangalore, and New Delhi. Of her work, the most recent to appear in English is A Kitchen in the Corner of the House, a mellifluous and courageous work translated by Lakshmi Holström, a dedicated scholar who passed away in 2016. She will be missed, and her efforts, evident in the enduring legacy and themes of A Kitchen in the Corner of the House, may inform the concerns of Indian feminism in the English-speaking world for generations.

The book is a collection of stories, told from multiple voices and perspectives, which centers on the travails and aspirations of women across a broad socio-economic and linguistic spectrum. The voices in A Kitchen in the Corner of the House reflect the varied cultural expectations and norms that simultaneously thrive and jostle for distinction within the Indian nation, which can be too easily regarded as a seamless whole by outside observers. What unites the characters in the stories, though, is a keen sense of subjective solidarity amongst women who are draped in desperation—and hope.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

September 6, 2019  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Quyen Nguyen, Sarah Moore, and Xiao Yue Shan

Follow our editors through France, Japan, and Vietnam as they bring a selection of literary news of the week.

This week, our editors are bringing you news from France, Japan, and Vietnam. After quiet summers in the literary world for many countries, September brings the literary scene back to life. In France, the anticipation is building ahead of the most prestigious literary prizes being awarded. In Japan, a new edition of a historic quarterly is uniting Japanese and Korean literature through a shared feminist voice. And in Vietnam, the launch of a new anthology, as well as events held by prestigious translators, celebrate the ties that are created through translation.

Sarah Moore, Assistant Blog Editor, reporting from France

September in France marks the rentrée littéraire, with hundreds of new titles published before the big award season starts in November. The prix Fémina, prix Renaudot, prix Interallié, prix Médicis, and the prix de l’Académie française will all be contested, as well as the prestigious prix Goncourt.

Amongst the French titles announced for the rentrée, Amélie Nothomb’s Soif (Albin Michel, 21 August) is highly anticipated, although not at all unexpected—an incredibly prolific author, she has consistently featured in the rentrée littéraire every year since the publication of her debut novel, Hygiène de l’assassin, in 1992 (Hygiene and the Assassin, Europa Editions, 2010). With a narrative that takes the voice of Jesus during the final hours of his life, Soif is sure to be as audacious, controversial, and successful as ever for Nothomb.

Marie Darrieussecq’s new novel, La Mer à l’envers (P.O.L, 2019), examines the migration crisis, narrating an encounter between a Parisian woman and a young refugee, rescued from a capsized boat. Many of Darrieussecq’s novels have already been translated into English, including her first novel Pig Tales (Faber & Faber, 2003), and, most recently, The Baby (Text Publishing, 2019). An interview with her translator, Penny Hueston, for Asymptote can be read here and an extract of her translation of Men was part of Asymptote‘s Translation Tuesday series for The Guardian.

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