This week at Asymptote, our Editors-at-Large report on book fairs, Annie Ernaux’s visit to India, and celebrations of International Mother Language Day all around the world. From the efforts of Trans activists and performance artists in Mexico to a recent multilingual anthology published by Olongo Africa, read on to learn more!
Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Mexico
The literary community in Mexico City has been vibrant and active in the first months of 2023. Between February 23–March 6, the Feria Internacional del Libro del Palacio de Minería took place in Mexico City. This forty-fourth edition of one of the biggest international book fairs in Mexico brought together writers, scholars, editors, and artists from all over the world. They gathered in the historic downtown to host readings, panels, and roundtables on literature, social sciences, and politics.
There were more than a hundred events, ranging from book presentations to movie screenings to workshops for children. In one panel, Asymptote contributor Tedi López Mills presented an edited anthology of her poetry, published by the National University of Mexico in its pamphlet series Material de lectura. The publication will bring López Mills’s poetry to a wider public. In another event, Cuban poet Odette Alonso moderated a talk with Lía García and Jessica Marjane, two Trans performance artists and organizers that have been at the forefront of the movement for Trans rights and recognition in Mexico. García and Marjane founded the National Network of Trans Youth, which has strengthened the community bonds among Trans young people in Mexico. García has acquired international recognition, having been invited to perform and read to institutions outside of Mexico, among them Harvard University and the University of Illinois’s Humanities Research Center.
At the same time as the fair, on February 25–26, the fifth Mexico City edition of the Kerouac Festival took place. The event features artwork at the intersection of poetry, music, and performance. It invites creators from around the world to share their most cutting-edge work. The lineup of this year includes Asymptote collaborator Chus Pato, alongside poets and performers Lucía Hinojosa, Necorita, Maijo Mora, María Medín Doce, Ánuar Zúñiga, Román de Castro, Alejandra Olson, Ramírez Kobra, Martín Rangel, Canek Zapta, Marcos de la Fuente, and Diana Juarrod. The festival took place at the Center for Digital Culture, the most important venue in Mexico promoting intermedia art and collaboration.
Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Kenya
The world united in observing International Mother Language Day on February 21. An annual celebration of one’s native tongue, many of which are threatened by extinction given the reality of dominant languages, International Mother Language Day is a crucial step in ensuring that languages—which are carriers of belief systems and thought patterns—are appreciated. As part of the celebrations, Olongo Africa, a pan-African community of opinion-makers, published a multilingual anthology in translation. The anthology featured, among other African languages, Yoruba, Ibibio, Shona, Tamazight, and Tiv. Mary Mukami, a Kenyan translator and writer, was featured in the anthology. Hers was a translation of Troy Onyango’s short story “Beachboy,” brought into Swahili as “Bichiboi.” Even more thrilling, the translation included a narration of the text by Mary Mukami herself.
On February 24, Yvonne Adhiambo Owour joined the International Advisory Board of the literary research platform at the Freien Universität Berlin. A statement announcing her addition to the board read, “We are pleased to welcome Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, former Dorothea Schlegel Artist in Residence, as a new member of our International Advisory Board at the Cluster . . . We are looking forward to continuing our work with Yvonne Owuor at the Cluster and are happy to have her.” Owuor is an award-winning Kenyan novelist who, for the last decade, has contributed immensely to shaping the Kenyan literary tradition, as well as appearing at the Macondo Literary Festival. The board serves to develop the field of global literary studies, where translation is competing for space in the contemporary canon.
Areeb Ahmad, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
The 2022 Nobel Prize winner and French writer, Annie Ernaux, is on her first trip to India as part of a delegation of authors representing France, which is the guest of honour at the New Delhi World Book Fair this year (February 25–March 5). She spoke at the inauguration last Saturday, sharing that coming to India was like a childhood dream come true. In a conversation later with writer and critic, Nilanjana Roy, Ernaux discussed her own works: “My writing came from my situation, which was that of a girl born in a working-class family, and got culture and education as tools, and access to another social class. I was also a woman.”
In a feature for International Mother Language Day, Rati Girish discusses how a lot of indie Indian publishers are helping children read in their mother tongues by releasing books in translation or commissioning work in original languages. Meanwhile, Aditya Mani Jha highlights how “English-language publishers have been engaging with Hindi literature at an unprecedented pace and translations between the languages is only poised to grow.” Baran Farooqi, whose recent English translation of Khalid Jawed’s Urdu novel Nemat Khana (The Paradise of Food) won the 2022 JCB Prize for Literature, warns against confining languages to nationalities.
In more sombre news, the Indian literary scene lost two well-known figures in the first two months of this year. KV Tirumalesh, most well-known for his poetry in Kannada, passed away on January 30, and Subimal Misra, the famous anti-establishment writer in Bengali, died on February 8. In a moving tribute, Kamalakar Bhat terms the former, who remains untranslated into English, a “compulsive experimenter.” He wrote, “A man of eclectic tastes and a true cosmopolitan, [he] made sure that his Kannada poetry was enriched by all the languages he knew, and all the readings he engaged in.” Misra’s long-time translator, V Ramaswamy, praises him as an unconventional writer who resisted preconceptions through radical works where “the way of writing predominates and tries to challenge the reader’s preconceptions, encouraging a discursive, deeper understanding.”
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