Place: Guerrero

Translation Tuesday: “The Train” by Martín Tonalmeyotl

Each step is a return: towards death, towards life

From the humorous to the profane and the sacred, Náhuatl poet Martín Tonalmeyotl’s poetic work is firmly rooted in the mountains of his native Guerrero (Mexico) and reflects his commitment to his culture and his language. Far from idealizing his home state, however, Tonalmeyotl’s work frequently takes an unflinching look at a sociopolitical situation where, in addition to the 2014 kidnapping and murder of forty-three students from Ayotzinapa amidst increasing violence from drug trafficking, Guerrero’s citizens have gone so far as to organize independent civil defense groups for protection. In “The Train,” the poet takes up another aspect of life in contemporary Mexico, human migration, in the series of freight trains otherwise known as La bestia (the Beast) or El tren de la muerte (the Death Train) that transport migrants from Central America to the US border.

—Paul Worley

The Train 

Each step is a return: towards death, towards life
Each train is a nightmare: of blood, of hunger, of cobwebs
Each child is a piece of fruit: rotten, sweet, bitter, what does it matter
At any rate life is sold to the scavengers
To the rancid wolves who’d like to eat us whole
Because if they don’t devour our stick-thin bones
Their potbellies will become hollow
And they won’t have any shit to feed their own parasites
We should get drunk, I tell you,
So we forget that on this earth
Day by day we are hunted down like rabid dogs

Translated from the Náhuatl into Spanish by Martín Tonalmeyotl
Translated from the Spanish into English  by Paul Worley

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

You can't end the week without being up to date with the latest in the world of literature!

Need another reason to welcome the weekend? We heard you! We’ve got literary scoop from three continents—literary prizes, festivals, and much besides to help you travel the world through books (is there really a better way?) 

From Singapore comes a dispatch from Editor-at-Large, Theophilus Kwek:

Celebrations were in order last month as graphic novelist Sonny Liew became the first Singaporean to win—not one, but three—Eisner Awards for The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, originally published by Epigram in 2015 and later released in the US by Pantheon. The volume, which narrates an alternative political history of Singapore through the life and work of a fictional Singaporean artist, also received the most nominations in this year’s awards, which were presented at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 22. The National Arts Council (NAC), which had previously drawn criticism for withdrawing Liew’s publishing grant on the grounds of ‘sensitive content’, came under fire once again for its brief (and some argued, half-hearted) congratulatory remarks on Facebook which did not mention the title of the winning work. Liew’s forthcoming projects include a take on the story of Singapore WWII heroine Elizabeth Choy.

Just a week after Liew’s win, Singapore’s Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, Grace Fu, responded to a parliamentary question over another NAC grant decision, this time concerning a novel by Asymptote contributor Jeremy Tiang, State of Emergency—also published by Epigram this year. According to Fu, funding was withdrawn from Tiang’s novel, which traces the lives of several fictional political activists and detainees, because its content had “deviated from the original proposal”—a statement which immediately drew mixed responses from Singapore’s literary community. At around the same time, fellow novelist Rachel Heng joined the ranks of Singaporean authors gaining recognition abroad as her forthcoming dystopian title, Suicide Club, was picked up by both Hodder & Stoughton in the UK and Henry Holt & Co. in the US.

Finally, on the eve of National Day (August 9) just this week, twenty-four writers and poets from Singapore presented a marathon 4-hour reading at BooksActually, which also runs an independent publishing arm, Math Paper Press. In addition to the literary delights on offer, the bookstore also served up another spicy and flavourful local favourite—fried chicken wings.

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