Posts filed under 'activism'

Translating Ulysses: An Interview with Filmmakers Aylin Kuryel and Fırat Yücel

This is what makes the translation of Ulysses a gift for the Kurdish language and its readers; it allows the archiving of this linguistic heritage.

In the 2023 documentary Translating Ulysses, Turkish filmmakers Aylin Kuyel and Fırat Yücel chronicle the painstaking efforts of poet and translator Kawa Nemir in rendering James Joyce’s “untranslatable” tome into Kurdish. This herculean task, which may seem rooted in the desire of any lover of literature to share a classic text in their native language, is in fact a tremendous act of activism for the Kurdish language, which has long been suppressed by Turkish nationalist policies, as well as a testament to the written text as a living, ever-changing discourse. Through close observation and innovative cinematic technique, Kuryel and Yücel paint a moving, profound portrait composed of the destructive language politics in contemporary Turkey; the tenuous, confounding journey of the translator; and literature as archive. What results is a film that is not only a document of Nemir’s epic journey through the Joycean labyrinth, but a remarkable, intricate tracing of how the vast history and collective memory of language can find a home in a story, or in a mind.

Xiao Yue Shan (XYS): Aylin, the relationships between images and their communication of ideology has been a continuous subject in your work as a filmmaker and thinker. In this film, however, it is not the image which takes centre stage, but a text; how has your conception of visual dialectics transferred into the consideration of language as a social and ideological construct? Has making this film changed the way either of you think about the role language plays, or the way its public usage interacts with discrete individuals?

Aylin Kuryel (AK): One of the central questions that haunted us while making this film was indeed how to ‘translate’ the process of translating a text into images, how to make both Ulysses itself and Kawa’s translation of Ulysses speak in images. This is probably why we ended up structuring the documentary in chapters, like a book, with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of the process of translation. We wanted to approach the film as a text itself, making references to Ulysses, and edit it in a way that would allow the images to be ‘read’ in multiple ways.

We had the ‘speaking soap’ of Joyce in our mind while focusing on objects that surround Kawa during his translation process, the colours of Ulysses’s chapters while playing with the colours of the film, and so on. The language of the film needs to reflect—or at least allude to—the subject it follows. Therefore, apart from the references to Ulysses, we also wanted to use found footage (official propaganda material or visuals of Kurdish resistance, taken from Youtube and social media). A documentary that attempts to touch upon a long-lasting collective resistance (in this case, against the oppression of the Kurdish language) can consist of a collective of images too, captured in different periods, by different people and organizations, for different purposes. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

Dispatches from Romania, Sweden, and North Macedonia!

In this week’s dispatches, our editors report on the continual remembrance of iconic poets, interdisciplinary festivals, and writing that draws attention to the climate crisis. Read on to find out more!

Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia

Sixty years after the tragic passing of Danica Ručigaj, iconic poet and pioneer of écriture féminine in North Macedonia, an anniversary edition containing the entirety of her oeuvre was published this month. The collection, entitled Srebreni nokjni igri i zarobenici na vetrot (Silver Nighttime Games and Prisoners of the Wind) was prepared by two prominent publicists and journalists working at Radio Skopje, Sveto Stamenov and Iskra Cholovikj, who have dedicated over two decades to researching Ručigaj’s reception and sustaining the vivacity of her legacy.

Ručigaj (1934–1963), sometimes referred to as the Sylvia Plath of North Macedonia for the unabashed vulnerability of her writing, studied ancient Greek, Latin, and Southern Slavic literature, and also worked for the Cultural Ministry of North Macedonia. She passed away at the age of twenty-nine in the 1963 Skopje earthquake—a devastating event that resulted in numerous casualties and left the entire city in ruins. Two poems famously discovered in the ruins of Ručigaj’s home—“Circles” and “Untitled”—will be featured in the anthology, along with essays about her work by prominent scholars and a complete bibliography of publications containing Ručigaj’s writing.

Ručigaj’s poetry, informed by her academic background and nonconformist, taboo-defying artistic attitude, occupies a prominent position in Macedonian literary history. Her refusal to comply with patriarchal norms continues to retain its relevance, as anti-equality sentiments are rising amidst the public. In one of her best-known poems, “No, Do Not Speak to Me” (“Ne, Ne Zboruvaj Mi”), a feminine voice laments the death of a bird who lived “within eyes that have now dried up”, simultaneously noting that its death might be a relief to some: “Come hither, do not fear / Those eyes no longer shine / And so, come hither.” As the poem progresses, we begin to realize that the owner of the eyes is the feminine speaker herself; without the bird—their inner songsmith—they no longer pose a threat to the Other that the poem is directed to. This poem remains an accurate image of gender relations in Macedonian society, where equality is still considered a threat to the “sanctity of the family”. READ MORE…

Dipped One in Dusk: Mai Serhan on the Diasporic Memoir and Translating Lyrics and Letters

I had a lot I needed to clarify, plenty of stereotypes to debunk, a narrative that was screaming at me to rewrite. . .

Short story writer, poet, memoirist, and translator Mai Serhan was born to a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother, and raised between the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Going on to study between Cairo, New York, and Oxford and work in Cairo, Dubai, and China, this mapping of her personal cartography and her transnational lineage transcends the borders of postcolonial nation-states—and so does her forthcoming memoir, Return is a Thing of Amber, which touches among national histories, letters, and the personal essay.

In this interview, I asked Serhan about her book in the landscape of the larger Arab memoir from the diaspora; the languages and genders that thrive in the liminalities of modern Egyptian literature; state censorship in publishing and the consequent rise of the literary blog; and translating the songs of Egyptian composer Sayyed Darwish as well as the letters of Palestinian activist Ali Shaath. 

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): The language of contemporary Egyptian literature, de facto, is Modern Standard Arabic—but there are writers who write in colloquial Egyptian Arabic and aʽīdi Arabic, echoing the lived reality of Egyptians in a gamut of dialects. Can you tell us the lingual milieu you write from—and how your decision to write in English come in? 

Mai Serhan (MS): Let me first map my geo-genealogical gamut. I was born to a Palestinian father and Egyptian mother, and carried a Lebanese passport for most of my life, since it is where my father’s family moved after 1948, and Egyptian mothers did not have the right to pass their nationality down to their children until 2009. When the Lebanese Civil War broke in 1975, my paternal grandparents moved to Cyprus where they waited for the war to end for fourteen years. It is there that I spent all my summers and Christmases as a child and teenager. The rest of my Palestinian family would fly into Limassol from all corners of the world—Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, the UK, and the US—and I spent all my formative years exposed to these different registers around me. After university, I joined my father in China where he worked in the export business, and I got to help him until the final year of his life. We travelled far and wide there, meeting with many of his Arab clients. After his death, I moved to Lebanon briefly, then Dubai where I worked as an English copywriter, then to New York where I studied screenwriting at New York University, eventually ending up in Oxford for my Creative Writing degree. All these places have deeply informed my upbringing—which is quite an international one.

I write in English because I went to a private British school, then to American and British universities. It’s the language I have been formally trained in all my life, both academically and professionally. I know how to express myself very well in Arabic, but the written word is definitely more present to me in English; it’s the language that has housed my scholarly and creative pursuits the most. That said, I am able to slip between Arabic and English with total ease and I am the bicultural product of both the East and West—and pretty much everything in between as well.

If we were to speak of my memoir, Return is a Thing of Amber, specifically, I would say the choice to write in English was a political one first and foremost; I wanted to address the English-speaking world, to debunk its many myths about land and people, and to promote awareness, compassion and understanding when it comes to Palestine and Palestinians. READ MORE…

Salone del Libro 2023: Diversity through the Looking Glass

The theme for this year’s Salone was “Through the Looking Glass”, featuring over 1,500 kaleidoscopic encounters between storytelling and reality.

The Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino, or the Turin International Book Fair, was established in 1988 to connect every single participant in the wide-ranging world of literature—from publishers to librarians and, of course, readers. Throughout a large catalogue of readings, performances, conferences, and workshops, the Salone brings in guests from all over the country and abroad to share in the joy of the written world, discuss the current prospects and themes of the industry, and showcase both Italian-language literature and promoting international writing within Italy. This year, Catherine Xin Xin Yu attended the fair on behalf of Asymptote to find out what it has on offer, from migrant literature to eco-writing.

From May 18 to 22, the 35th Salone Internazionale del Libro—the largest annual book fair in Italy—attracted over 200,000 visitors to the Lingotto Fiere exhibition centre in Turin. Over five days of panels, lectures, publisher exhibitions, and literary initatives, perhaps the biggest news story to emerge from the event is an ecofeminist protest led by Non una di meno (Not One Woman Less) and four other Turin-based activist groups against Eugenia Maria Roccella, the anti-abortionist and queerphobic Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities. Protestors, along with members of the audience who spontaneously joined them, prevented the politician from presenting her newly released memoir in order to demonstrate what it is like to be silenced by the state institutions she represented—which tampers with women’s rights to abortion and surrogate maternity while muddying the water with media misrepresentation and cracking down on protests using police forces. While this peaceful protest was labelled as “anti-democratic” and “unacceptable” by the Meloni government, the Director of the Salone, Nicola Lagioia, defended the contestation as a legitimate democratic act. This is one way in which the Salone provided an urgently needed platform for repressed voices, while opening up a pathway to diversity.

Indeed, the theme for this year’s Salone was “Through the Looking Glass,” featuring over 1,500 kaleidoscopic encounters between storytelling and reality, with notable attempts to bring forward new, alternative perspectives. One such novelty was the focus on colonial legacies and decoloniality. A panel featuring the Somali-Italian author Igiaba Scego, Turin-based Albanian visual artist Driant Zeneli, and Italian crime fiction author Carlo Lucarelli looked at the removal of Italian colonial history from collective memory—drawing attention to the lack of guilt and the myth of “Italiani brava gente” (“Italians, good people”). Many place names in Italy still bear witness its colonial past: visitors in Turin might notice that the final stop of Metro Line 1 is called Bengasi (like the city in Libya); I myself have rented a flat on Via Tripoli and regularly run errands on Via Addis Abeba (like the capital of Ethiopia) and Via Macallè. But these quotidian reminders often go unnoticed, and colonial history is not systematically taught in schools.

salone del turino 1

At the heart of the discussions on how this silence can be broken are words that “tear apart, resist, and restore,” to quote Jhumpa Lahiri’s preface to Scego’s latest novel, Cassandra a Mogadiscio (Cassandra in Mogadishu). Another panel on decolonisation, featuring the Italo-Somali author Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, the Iraqi author and intellectual Sinan Antoon, and the Filipino trauma journalist Patricia Evangelista, insisted on the importance of reconstructing the lived experiences of victims from a non-Western point of view, and restoring names and humanity to these individuals. Italian, the language of formal education in ex-colonies like Somalia and Ethiopia, is both a line of coloured division and the language of cultural exchange. Recognising the plurality of Italian and using it to foreground individual experiences are both ways to decolonise while writing in the language of the colonisers. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

News this week from Argentina, Armenia, and Hong Kong!

As the scope of literature continues to take in the shifting realms of experiences and global relations, our editors from around the world report the latest updates, from festivals, activisms, and the spotlighting of vital voices both new and familiar. Read on to find out more!

Josefina Massot, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina

Last week, we mourned the loss of the great Sergio Chejfec, whose work spanned grammars, genres, and geographies. Chejfec spent his time between his native Buenos Aires and New York City, where he lived and taught at NYU’s Creative Writing Program. During a 2018 interview with Télam, he spoke about the impact of migration on his work: “In my experience, moving from one country to another accentuates the passage of time: the gap isn’t merely geographic. Exiles are far away from their countries, but also from the network of simultaneities they were accustomed to while living there; notable among these is language.” Fortunately, gaps and absences can be bridged through translation. Chejfec’s works are available in French, German, Portuguese, and English, and US readers can delight in them via Open Letter.

Meanwhile, Other Press is on the verge of releasing Kit Maude’s rendition of Camila Sosa Villada’s Bad Girls (incidentally, Sosa Villada’s latest has just come out in Spanish). Equal parts gritty and tender, Bad Girls narrates a trans woman’s exploits at the margins of society; a recipient of the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award in 2020, it’s bound to take America by storm. The award’s previous winner, Maria Gainza’s Portrait of an Unknown Lady, just out from Catapult, was also widely celebrated upon its reception. The novel, translated by Thomas Bunstead, follows an auction house employee on the trail of an elusive forger; like Gainza’s The Optic Nerve, it draws from art and literature to great effect. READ MORE…

Blackness and the Experience of Blackness: Paulo Scott and Daniel Hahn on Phenotypes

I think if you read a sentence in Portuguese, you would recognize it as a Paulo Scott sentence from two hundred meters away.

In the electrifying novel Phenotypes, Paulo Scott takes on the complex subject of Brazil’s racism and colorism, dispelling rosy myths of the country as one of harmonious multiculturalism. In a story of two brothers—Lourenço and Federico, the former dark-skinned and the latter light—the intricacies of privilege, identity, activism, and guilt are brilliantly explored in Scott’s unmistakable blend of length and lyric, bringing to the page some of the most urgent and daunting questions of our time. We are honored to host this title as our Book Club selection for January, and also to have spoken live to Scott and translator Daniel Hahn about the novel’s nuances, regionality, and language.

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, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.   

Rachel Farmer (RF): One of the main themes of Phenotypes is what constitutes an activist approach to the many problems portrayed in the novel. Paulo, could you talk about what inspired you to write about activism in this way?

Paulo Scott (PS): Well Rachel, I come from Southern Brazil, which is a very racist region. My family is black, upper-middle class—you know, the kind of family that is in a position to speak out against this racism. So I took the truth of my family to create fiction. My brother is black—real black—and I have this lighter skin. But I see myself as a black man. My mother might deny it now, but as I remember, she always said that we were a black family.

I think that this book is both one of anger and of self-reflection. The protagonist found a place in the heart of anger to build a very specific story for himself, then at some point, he got lost in this fight against racism. He believed himself to be really strong, he saw his father as a very strong man, and he thought that his father’s power was in this anger, his rage against the world—but it wasn’t. Instead, the fact is that his father could understand the complexity of racism, like [Martin Luther] King [Jr.].

There is a connection between the members of this family: father, grandfather, son, and granddaughter—Roberta, the niece of the protagonist. They are almost the same entity, as three different movements of the same vision. The story ends with Roberta sleeping in the back seat of the car because she’s the future. I could have written a book about Roberta, for efficiency’s sake, but this is not a book of answers; this is a book of questions. The racism in Brazil is very, very strong, and it’s still a taboo topic here. The suffering is so pervasive that some readers struggle to see themselves in this mirror. 

RF: Were certain characters—such as that of the mother—inspired directly by the memories of your own family?

PS: My brother was the coach of my state’s basketball team, and he is a really dark-skinned man. He’s not afraid to be with white people—powerful people. He’s black, but he’s in that club of the upper-class, and he doesn’t accept any disrespect. That’s really strong. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Ecopoetry and code-breaking are capturing readers around the world in this week's dispatches.

In this week’s dispatches, Bulgarian readers brave the winter for an event highlighting environmental literature, Sweden commemorates the beloved children’s book author, Astrid Lindgren, and Italy celebrates what would have been Umberto Eco’s 90th birthday with a new publication. Read on to find out more!

Andriana Hamas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Bulgaria

Believe it or not—it is already February, and despite the cold weather in Bulgaria, various cultural events are popping up here and there. With an ever-increasing focus on climate change and the dire consequences we are already facing, different local artists are attempting to highlight the need for conscious, collective action.

One of the strategies employed to combat phenomena such as global warming constitutes the recycling of different materials. Interestingly enough, the whole concept also happens to be at the heart of literary critic and professor of literary theory Amelia Licheva’s latest poetry collection, The Need for Recycling, which considers the act through the prism of creative impulses and intuitive journeys through one’s feelings and experiences. The book, officially published by Lexicon Publishing House on Christmas Eve, 2021, also contains illustrations by the painter Veselin Pramatarov. In an interview for the Bulgarian National Radio, Licheva revealed that the title could be interpreted as “the search for lost meaning.” She is fully aware that the formula is far from light, but insists that the initial shock—bound to rock the reader’s inner world—is in fact a sought-after provocation of sorts.

The launch of the book, which took place not long ago at Sofia City Library, was attended by over fifty people eager to hear the poetess’s newest verses. The lively discussion was hosted by the prominent writer Georgi Gospodinov (whose works have previously appeared in Asymptote) and translator Daria Karapetkova, with the actress Snezhina Petrova was in charge of recitation. After the long-anticipated premiere, the author used her social media profile to extend her gratitude to “all of my colleagues, friends, and students who attended the debut of my poetry collection. Thank you for the solidarity and for the unique privilege to be able to feel like a part of a meaningful community.”

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

A week ago today, on January 28, Sweden commemorated twenty years since the country’s most internationally known writer, Astrid Lindgren, passed away at the age of ninety-four. The creator of strong, ingenious, and unforgettable children’s book characters like Pippi Longstocking, Karlsson on the Roof, Ronja the Robber’s Daughter, and Lotta on Troublemaker Street, Lindgren has enthralled and inspired readers around the world for generations. Her books have been translated into 107 languages, including numerous translations into English by Joan Tate—who also has translated other significant Swedish writers like Ingmar Bergman, Kerstin Ekman, and P.C. Jersild. Lindgren has been awarded both national and international literary awards, as well as received honorary degrees from Linköping University in Sweden, the University of Leicester in the UK, and the University of Warsaw in Poland. On the year of her passing, the Swedish government instituted the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA), which awards a writer, illustrator, or promoter of reading in March every year. During her lifetime, Lindgren not only wrote for and about children, but she was also an activist for children’s rights––which is why the Astrid Lindgren estate today, together with Save the Children, continues to work on the Pippi of Today campaign for refugee girls. READ MORE…

Announcing Our January Book Club Selection: Phenotypes by Paulo Scott

In raising the issue of racism and one’s actions in the face of it, the book itself is arguably a force of social progress and understanding . . .

In the first few pages of Paulo Scott’s striking Phenotypes, the protagonist and narrator describes the appearances of himself and his brother in contrasts: blond and brown, fair and dark. What follows is an immersive and urgent novel that addresses the ethics and injustices of Brazil’s colourism in Scott’s signature fluidity and perspicacity, exploring the limits of intentions and justices to probe at the centric forces of activism. As our first Book Club selection of 2022, it is a vital and incisive look at a nation—and a world—stricken with crises of race and identity.

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, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.  

Phenotypes by Paulo Scott, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn, And Other Stories, 2022

What is the price of activism? Of wanting to change the world for the better? Do motivations, or true intentions, make a difference?

Federico, the protagonist of Paulo Scott’s engrossing and astute novel Phenotypes, is an activist by most definitions. He is co-founder of the Global Social Forum in his hometown—the “whirring blender” that is Porto Alegre; he has researched colourism in Brazil; he has advised NGOs in Latin America and beyond; and now, he is serving on a commission tasked with solving the problems caused by racial quota systems within universities.

Activism, from catalyst to consequence, forms an unavoidable part of his reality. The son of a white mother and a Black father, Federico has always been light-skinned while his brother Lourenço is much darker, and this ability to pass as white has afforded Federico privileges that his brother has never been able to enjoy. The discrepancy has been a lifelong source of awkwardness and discomfort, forcing him into a complex relationship with his own identity. Over time, Federico has ensconced himself in layer upon layer of guilt—a self-inflicted yoke around his neck that continually fuels his activism and shapes his life’s ambitions.

Federico’s impressive resume of achievements stem from his efforts to tackle Brazil’s seemingly insurmountable racism problem—but are these noble actions merely attempts at controlling his circumstances? Is he simply—as his former girlfriend Bárbara puts it—surrounding himself with “noise”? Bárbara, a psychologist who provides clinical care for those traumatised by activism, knows all too well the price people pay fighting for causes they believe in. In her patients, the constant struggle to topple a seemingly insurmountable system, as well as exposure to the true extents of injustice, has left them physically and emotionally drained. In certain cases, the trauma is irreparable. READ MORE…

Section Editors’ Highlights: Summer 2019

Standout pieces from the Summer 2019 issue of Asymptote, as selected by section editors!

Another issue of Asymptote means another dazzling array of voices, languages, and genres in translation. If you’re not sure where to begin, look no further than these recommendations from the editors who compiled this spectacular issue

From Lee Yew Leong, Fiction and Poetry Editor:

This issue’s Fiction section is memorable for being the first fiction lineup in an Asymptote issue (and there are now 34 of them!) that does not include a single European author. Naguib Mahfouz and Bernardo Esquinca have already been singled out by the blog editors last week, so I’ll touch briefly on works by Bijan Najdi and Siham Benchekroun—two ambitious short stories that are remarkable in different ways. Showcasing the acclaimed narrative technique for which he was known, Najdi’s heartbreaking story “A Rainy Tuesday” (translated beautifully by Michelle Quay) unravels the thin seam between memory and reality, leading us on a nonlinear journey through grief. Benchekroun’s “Living Words,” on the other hand, is also a personal essay that exults in the very richness of language. Kudos to translator Hannah Embleton-Smith who masterfully tackled a text that leans so heavily on French phonetics to make synaptic leaps—and gave us something in English that preserves the delight of the original French. My personal favorites from the Poetry section this issue are the new translations of The Iliad by James Wilcox, which inject vigor into an ancient classic, and Tim Benjamin’s introduction of Leonardo Sanhueza, 2012 winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize for career achievement. Benjamin’s evocative translations bring into English for the first time an extraordinary poetic voice that deserves to reach a wider audience.

From Joshua Craze, Nonfiction Section Editor:

Personal Jesus” by Fausto Alzati Fernández is a visceral study of the self that drugs make. Ably translated by Will Stockton, the prose slows down time, as we wait on the side of the highway, hoping for a fix, and then, finally, time stops, in the infinite space of the hit. Fernández explores an enchanted world, in which of all the dumb sad morass of the human animal is given the possibility of transcendence, and yet—cruelties of cruelties—it is this very transcendence that produces the animals living half-lives that stumble around his dealer’s living room. “Personal Jesus” is a love letter, written to a cleansing balm that leaves us only more pitiful than before.

READ MORE…

Meet the Publisher: Feminist Press’ Lauren Rosemary Hook on Feminist Writing in Translation

Now that Trump is president, people are like, “of course we need a feminist press.” But five years ago people were really questioning why.

Since 1970, Feminist Press has made it its mission to publish marginalized voices and authors writing about issues of equality and gender identity. From the start, founder Florence Howe focused on publishing works in translation from around the world alongside feminist classics by local writers. Almost fifty years later, the press’s catalogue continues to reflect these priorities. Senior editor Lauren Rosemary Hook spoke to Sarah Moses, Asymptote’s Editor-at-Large for Argentina, about the press’s approach to publishing in the current political climate, acquiring works from different countries, and titles in translation that readers can be on the lookout for.

Sarah Moses: How did Feminist Press get started?

Lauren Rosemary Hook: We were founded in 1970 by an English professor named Florence Howe. It was very much a reaction to the few women’s studies courses that were popping up at the time. I feel like that’s something we take for granted—women’s and gender studies—now that programs are available at every university. But I can count on only one hand how many there were across the country then, so it was a very tight-knit group. There was a lot of talk about how there weren’t many texts available by women—besides Emily Dickinson—especially in literature, and Florence was a part of this dialogue. A lot of feminist professors and activists at the time met up and Florence went away on vacation and came back and she had all these checks in her mailbox made out to the Feminist Press, and she was like, “I’m doing this?” It’s a really fascinating story.

READ MORE…

Spring 2017: Fighting the Muslim Ban

We literature people must do all we can to agitate for open borders.

What follows is some lightly edited magazine correspondence leading up to the Spring 2017 edition:

January 29

Subject: A thought on what we might do as a magazine

Hello team,

I’m sure many of you are unhappy about Trump’s outrageous ban on refugees and residents from seven Muslim countries; it woke up the activist in me (and also literally kept me awake, which is why I’m writing this at 7 a.m. on a Sunday). Since we happen to have a slot open anyway, I’d like to dedicate our Spring 2017 Special Feature to authors from these countries—Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen—and perhaps we could increase the percentage of work originating from these countries in our regular sections as well—that is, if the section editors are willing and able.

To spread the word, we could tap our network of volunteer translators and commission translations into other languages as we’ve done many times before… Publishing the work in our weekly showcase at The Guardian could also get them more attention… as a matter of fact, thanks to Tomás, our editor-at-large for Chile, we have already lined up a Syrian-born poet next Tuesday.

We’d have to fundraise for this Feature to happen—and I’ll need help. To that end, I’ve added two more questions to the internal questionnaire due this coming Wednesday.

Now, I hope to set up the crowdfunding page as soon as possible, so if you feel very strongly that you’d like to be part of this effort, please email me offlist and let me know how you might contribute. For those of you who just joined, you can find an example of a previous crowdfunding effort undertaken by the magazine here (it’s usually very stressful). If support is not forthcoming, I don’t think I will go through with this Feature, as I’m already carrying a lot of magazine work and probably can’t take on the fundraising alone (which is what I did last year for our fifth anniversary events).

***

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The youth carry the fire and the rejection against tyrants in their blood: An Interview with Gioconda Belli

This new rebellion has been a spontaneous movement, organized by the social memory we, as Nicaraguans, have after fighting another dictatorship.

Since the late 1950’s people in Nicaragua began actively fighting and opposing the Somoza dictatorship—Anastasio Somoza took power for the first time in 1937. In the mid-1970’s the opposition grew stronger, and in 1979, the Sandinistas came together, and launched the People’s Revolution. Guerrillas, artists, rebels, and civilians united against the somocistas. And on July 19th, 1979, victory was announced. The Sandinista Revolution brought together people like the Cervantes Prize-Winning Author, Sergio Ramírez, the former Catholic priest and poet, Ernesto Cardenal, the poet and novelist Gioconda Belli, and the current Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega Saavedra.  

Ortega later came to power in 1979 for a four-year period and then again in 2007. He has since become a mirror image of Somoza; he has been in office for more than ten years and has recently silenced, threatened, and killed members of the opposition.

In mid-April of this year, thousands gathered on the streets of Nicaragua to show their discontent against the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, in particular for issues relating to environmental rights, corruption, public health, and lack of transparency. Four months later, the protests have not slowed down and neither has the repression coming from the Policía Nacional de Nicaragua and other orteguistas. Every day, images of bravery and brutality come from Nicaragua. El presidente, who was once part of the Sandinista revolution that ousted the Somoza dictatorship that shackled the country for more than thirty years, has now become a tyrant himself and has betrayed the ideals that he, alongside writers and activists like Claribel Alegría and Sergio Ramírez, fought so diligently for in the seventies and eighties. 

Gioconda Belli, one of Central America’s most beloved and important writers, has openly criticized Daniel Ortega and his government. In early August, the poet and novelist won the Hermann Kesten Prize for her outstanding efforts in support of persecuted writers, and she joined the ranks of other prominent writers and Human Rights advocates, such as Harold Pinter and Iryna Khalip.

Belli, who was one of the artists that walked alongside the Sandinista revolution, next to people like Ernesto Cardenal and Carlos Mejía Godoy, says she’s hopeful. “There is always hope,” she says. She also admits she trusts in the Nicaraguan youth that has bravely fought for a fairer society. The revolution, she argues, in the hands of the young men and women marching in Managua, in León, in Masaya, is alive and well. “Whenever you think of tyrants, such as Daniel Ortega, you must remember that their time will eventually come,” she adds. Finally, art, music, and literature, according to Belli, are the tool Nicaragua has to plan for a better future.

More than three hundred people have been killed by the hands of the orteguismo since the protests began, on April 18th. Daniel Ortega has been in power since 2007.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Our weekly roundup of literary news brings us to Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, and Indonesia.

June is upon us and we are settling in for some summer reading. Join us as we catch up with our international correspondents about the literary happenings around the world. This week brings us the latest on indigenous literature from Colombia and Mexico, book fairs in Argentina, and new artistic endeavors in Indonesia!

Paul Worley and Kelsey Woodburn, Editors at Large, reporting from Colombia and Mexico:

From April 25 to 29 in Bogotá, Colombia, indigenous writers and scholars and critics of indigenous literatures from throughout the Américas came together in the 5th Continental Intercultural Encounter of Amerindian Literatures (EILA). The theme for this iteration of the bi-annual conference was “Indigenous Writing, Extractivism, and Bird Songs.” The centering of these concerns reflects a turn in the field of Indigenous literatures towards recognizing indigenous ways of writing that take place beyond Latin script, as well as ongoing ecological concerns that are at the heart of a good deal of indigenous literatures and Indigenous activism. In addition to literary readings and panels held at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, writers and critics presented to the general public at Bogotá’s International Book Festival (FILBO), and indigenous poets gave a reading in the town of Guatavita, home to a lake sacred to the Muisca people. Among the writers in attendance were (K’iche’) Humberto Ak’abal, (Yucatec) Jorge Cocom Pech, (Wayuu) Vito Apüshana, (Wayuu) Estercilla Simanca, (Wayuu) Vicenta Siosi, and (Yanakuna) Fredy Chicangana.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Your weekly roundup of global literary news and intrigue.

Ever get the feeling that even with all the news happening right now in the world, you’re still not getting enough? Well, that’s what we’re here for, keeping you covered with the latest in global literary news from our Editors-at-Large who are on the ground as we speak. This week we have reports about censorship and activism from Singapore and Mexico, as well as important news about festivals and prizes in the UK, and much, much more. 

Theophilus Kwek, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Singapore: 

The Singapore International Festival of the Arts (SIFA)―launched in 2014 to revive the Singapore Arts Festival, a landmark event in Southeast Asia’s arts calendar―drew to a close this week, concluding a month of theatre, film, music, and visual arts shows. These included a number of international partnerships such as Trojan Women, a Korean retelling of Homer’s epic directed by the SIFA’s founding festival director Ong Keng Sen; as well as Becoming Graphic, a collaboration between Australian theatre practitioner Edith Podesta and Eisner Award-winning graphic artist Sonny Liew, who previously had his funding withdrawn by the National Arts Council for his alternative political history of Singapore.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Guardian to mark his final year as festival director, Ong (who has previously spoken out against the censorship of SIFA’s programs by the government) lamented the “restrictive” attitudes of state funding agencies towards the arts, and said that he felt “drained by the fighting” of the past four years. His successor, fellow theatre practitioner Gaurav Kripalani―currently artistic director at the Singapore Repertory Theatre―struck a more conciliatory position earlier this year, saying that he would opt for increasingly “mainstream” programming.

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