Posts filed under 'gender violence'

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest from the Latinx, Greek, and Filipino literary worlds!

This week, our editors direct us towards the profound and plentiful artistic productions emerging from border crossings, diverse encounters, and cross-genre interpretations. From a festival celebrating multicultural writings, novel adaptations of classic canons, and the newly elected fellows to a prestigious international residency, these developments in world literature remind us that within the schematics of difference, shared passions grow and proliferate to create unities.

Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the United States

Between June 21 and 23, Hispanic and U.S. literary enthusiasts gathered in San Francisco for the International Flor y Canto Literary Festival. Originally founded by Latinx poet Alejandro Murguia, acclaimed poet and professor at San Francisco State University, this year’s lineup featured a diverse variety of poetry readings, literary workshops, and movie screenings—all open to the public. Participants included Latinx and Mexican writers, poets, and directors dealing with topics such as identity, multiculturalism, language, and resistance. Most of the events took place at the legendary Medicine for Nightmare bookstore, a unique promoter of Latin American and Latinx literature in San Francisco.

One of the most exciting events was a poetry workshop led by the Mexican poet Minerva Reynosa. Titled “¿Quieres escribir pero te sale espuma?” (Do you want to write a poem but only foam comes out?), the workshop encouraged new writers to try out different techniques to overcome writer’s block. In another event, Reynosa read from her most recent book, Iremos que te pienso entre las filas y el olfato pobre de un paisaje con borrachos o ahorcados. The collection portrays life around the Mexico-U.S. border in the nineties, told from the perspective of a bicultural family dealing with gender violence. The works in the book are long poems of mostly short unrhymed verses, using colloquialisms endemic to the north of Mexico, in a fast paced and highly rhythmic prosody. They also include fragments from songs by the iconic Latinx singer Selena. In her reading, Reynosa usually sings these musical portions, highlighting the sonic elements in the poems and their cultural significance. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: May 2023

New translations from the Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese!

This month, our editors feature three titles that showcase what’s possible when a writer fully showcases a firm and brilliant insight into their reality. From a collection of short stories that investigate the violence of Latin American society, to a multifaceted depiction of colonial Mozambique, to essays that focus on the intimate dailyness of human lives in twentieth-century China, these works educate, provoke, and enthrall. Read on to find out more!

ampuero

Human Sacrifices by María Fernanda Ampuero, translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle, The Feminist Press, 2023

Review by Rubén Lopez, Editor-at-Large for Central America

In Human Sacrifices, a collection of short stories, María Fernanda Ampuero traces the deterioration of individuals who have survived an overwhelmingly violent reality. With guts, blood, and a dense anger, she escorts us to a precipice with each story, strips us naked, and delivers us to a place where the wounds of Latin American are made real, and thus can be dissected. Published by Editorial Páginas de Espuma in 2021 and now appearing in English translation by Frances Riddle, the collection contains twelve stories that question our reality as one occasionally resembling more a traitorous deception.

The stories in Human Sacrifices are profoundly Latin American, but more specifically, they describe the experience of vulnerable Latin American women: a unique kind of hell. Gendered violence is present in almost all the narratives—a bone that vertebrates the monster: “Desperate women,” states one of the protagonists, “serve as meat for the grinder. Immigrant women are bones to be pulverized into animal fodder.” The opening story, “Biography,” is perhaps the most intimate, narrating in first person the terror of being a migrant woman in a foreign country. The narrative implants the dehumanizing panic of crossing invisible borders in pursuit of a less harsh horizon, as well as the fear of becoming an anonymous number, a disappeared woman, a name written on a wall. As the narrator states: “I remember someone once told me that the stars we see have been dead for a long time, and I think that maybe the disappeared women might also shine on like that, with that same blinding light, making it easier to find them.”

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Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest in literary news from Palestine and Mexico!

This week, our Editors-at-Large bring us updates on prestigious awards and literary festivals from Palestine and Mexico! From the 2023 winners of the Mahmoud Darwish Award for Creativity to multisensorial poetry from the UANLeer book fair, read on to learn more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large for Palestine and the Palestinians, reporting from Palestine

The 2023 edition of the Mahmoud Darwish Award for Creativity has been announced, with three winners selected from different categories. In the Palestinian Creative category, Palestinian poet and academic Dr. Salma al-Khadra al-Jayyusi won for her significant contributions to contemporary Arabic poetry, including leading a translation project that brought several notable works to English readers.

Lebanese composer, singer, and musician Marcel Khalife won the Arab Creative category for the remarkable additions he has brought to Arab musical heritage. Khalife is known for his devotion to Palestinian poetry, particularly that of Mahmoud Darwish, and has left an indelible mark on the Arab audience’s consciousness.

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