Posts by Sarah Gear

Slivers of Beauty and Optimism: On Artem Chapeye’s Love Letter to Ukraine

April 25, 2024  |  in Reviews  |  by Sarah Gear

Chapeye . . . focuses on the effect of these [linguistic] dynamics on the individual and the local rather than society at large.

The Ukraine by Artem Chapeye, translated from the Ukrainian, Russian, and Surzhyk by Zenia Tomkins, Seven Stories Press, 2024

‘This next part is my favorite part of traveling’, the narrator of the Artem Chapeye’s opening story ‘Pan Ivan and the Three Bears’ tells his friends as they are invited into a local man’s mountain home to shelter from the cold. Pan Ivan feeds them borsch and hot tea as he regales them with stories about bears—nearly all ending in death, but all endearing in their own way. Chapeye’s beautifully fairy tale-like opening invites us to explore his provocatively-articled short story collection The Ukraine, translated by Zenia Tomkins. Chapeye—a writer, photographer, and now soldier—wrote these stories between 2010 and 2018, blending fiction with autobiography. Snippets of rural and urban life shot through with perceptive encounters with a rich cast of characters, these stories form a love letter to Ukraine and its people. 

While some stories are told from other characters’ points of view, the narrator of the majority  appears to be Chapeye himself as he travels around Ukraine on a beaten-up motorbike, sometimes accompanied by his wife Oksana. While Ukraine is doubtless the main character, Chapeye himself emerges as the most sympathetic and immediate of storytellers. His ability to see the good in everyone, and his gentle questioning of the people he meets is one of the most endearing aspects of his book.  In ‘A Fancy Send-Off,’ Chapeye—who, in the present day, is a soldier fighting against Russia’s invasion—meets Baba Shura, whom he describes as ‘very Soviet’ because of her view that Russia and Ukraine should be ‘together forever’. Rather than argue with her, Chapeye allows her to voice her opinion, before permitting himself only the most agreeable of disagreements: ‘“They’ve supposedly separated already,” I reply, allowing myself to contradict her, which I only do very, very hesitantly.’ He leaves the subject there, instead describing the elderly lady with warmth: ‘Baba Shura never stops smiling, even when she’s talking about something sad, like that fancy send-off of hers. Periodically, she adjusts her scarf. She looks at me kindly. She’s waiting for the rain to pass. She’s worried that she’ll get drenched on her bicycle in the five kilometers she has to ride home.’

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Translating Indonesia’s On-the-Ground Realities: An Interview with John McGlynn

April 11, 2024  |  in Interviews  |  by Sarah Gear

[I]f Indonesia were to ever gain a foothold on the international literary stage, something had to change.

The Lontar Foundation was launched in 1987 to raise the profile of Indonesian literature worldwide, initially intending to translate Indonesian fiction into English for publishers. Largely through necessity, however, the foundation has since become a publisher in its own right. Founded by John McGlynn and Indonesian authors Sapardi Djoko Damono, Goenawan Mohamad, Subagio Sastrowardoyo, and Umar Kayam, Lontar has since, to date, published works from over six hundred and fifty Indonesian authors in English, providing vital contributions that trace the country’s complex cultural and literary developments. In this interview, McGlynn speaks on his interest in Indonesia, the importance of Lontar’s work, and the challenges faced by Indonesian literature both at home and abroad.

Sarah Gear (SG): How did you first become interested in Indonesian literature?

John McGlynn (JM): It all began with wayang—Javanese shadow puppets. As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, from 1970 to 1972, I was a combined art-design-theatre major and had begun to create shadow puppets depicting characters from Western literary texts. I was participating in protests against the Vietnam War and my characters told the struggle of a small nation against a powerful aggressor. The problem was that while I was able to craft these new shadow puppets, I had no idea how to operate them. After a summer course at the University of Washington in Seattle, where I studied shadow puppetry technique with a Javanese dalang (shadow master), I transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the centers for Indonesian Studies in the United States. In the span of the next two years, I took an array of other courses relating to Indonesia, including a mentorship in Indonesian literature.

I then left for Indonesia in May 1976, on a three-month scholarship to study advanced Indonesian. That trip, which ended up lasting until December 1978, was an intensive cultural immersion process, during which my primary language was Indonesian. I traveled extensively in Sumatra and Java, studied language and literature at the University of Indonesia, served as an assistant to renowned linguist and translation theoretician Ian Catford, and worked as a translator for a number of Indonesian institutions.

I was spending most of my free nights at the Jakarta Arts Center, or Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM), as a spectator to plays, poetry readings, and cultural discussions. At TIM, I came to know numerous prominent Indonesian authors, a number of whom then asked me to translate their work. I was collecting and reading all the literary texts I could get a hold of and had begun to translate numerous Indonesian short stories, and several novels as well; all this led me to pursue a Master’s degree in Indonesian literature at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, which I did from January 1979 to May 1981. READ MORE…