Posts by Thuy Dinh

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

December 4, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Clémence Lucchini, MK Harb, and Thuy Dinh

The latest news from Lebanon, the Vietnamese diaspora, and France!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Lebanon, the Vietnamese diaspora, and France. In Lebanon, Jadaliyya has published an essay on the late Lebanese poet Iliya Abu Madi and Lebanese author Nasri Atallah has been included in a new anthology, Haramcy; in the Vietnamese diaspora, December 6 marks the 183th birthday of Petrus Ký, a prominent Vietnamese scholar who helped to improve the cultural understanding between French-colonized Vietnam and Europe; and in France, whilst bookshops have suffered from national lockdowns, a new translation of poems by contemporary poet Claire Malroux has been released. Read on to find out more! 

MK Harb, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Lebanon

Arab sci-fi lovers rejoice! An Arabic translation of the late American science fiction author Octavia Butler’s Kindred is coming out with Takween Publishing. Dr. Mona Kareem Kareem, a writer, literary scholar, and Arabic-English literary translator, worked on the Arabic manuscript during her residency at Princeton University. She will be holding an online talk, “To Translate Octavia Butler: Race, History, and Sci-Fi,” on December 7. Tune in as you wait for the manuscript with sci-fi jitters! In other translation news, Kevin Michael Smith, a scholar and translator of global modernist poetry, translated two poems by Saadi Youssef for Jadaliyya. Yousef is a prolific writer, poet, and political activist from Iraq and we are delighted to see more of his work profiled in English. Also on Jadaliyya is this beautiful rumination on the late Lebanese poet Iliya Abu Madi and his political imagination. Abu Madi wrote spellbinding poetry and was part of the twentieth-century Mahjar movement in the United States, which included the renowned Lebanese author, Gibran Khalil Gibran.

In publishing news, Bodour Al-Qasimi, founder and CEO of Kalimat Group, an Emirati publishing house for Arabic books, has been announced as the president of the International Publishers Association! Al-Qasimi has tirelessly worked on expanding the scope of the Arab publishing industry and we are happy to see her achieve this feat. Award-winning artist and cultural entrepreneur, Zahed Sultan, is seeking to release Haramcy, an anthology with twelve writers from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, including Lebanese author Nasri Atallah. It is set to be published with Unbound Books and the anthology addresses pertinent themes of love, invisibility, and belonging. In the spirit of the holidays, if you are feeling generous and capable of donating, then consider contributing to the Haramcy Fund.

We know the holidays are upon us and you are looking forward to cozying up with a book or two (or five in our case!). We have some new Arabic literature in translation for you to read during the holidays! The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize shortlist has been announced! Another shortlist we are excited about is the Warwick Women in Translation Prize, which features Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Sudanese author, Rania Mamoun, translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette.

Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Vietnamese Diaspora

December 6, 2020 marks the 183th birthday of Petrus Ký, also called Trương Vĩnh Ký, whose prolific achievements as scholar, translator, and publisher helped broaden the cultural understanding between French-colonized Vietnam and Europe. His vanguard efforts popularized chữ quốc ngữ, or modern Romanized script—leading to its official adoption as Vietnam’s national language in the early twentieth century. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

October 30, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Kwan Ann Tan, Sarah Moore, and Thuy Dinh

The latest news from the Vietnamese diaspora, Malaysia, and France!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from the Vietnamese diaspora, Malaysia, and France. This month celebrates children’s literature in the Vietnamese diaspora, with a host of events and literary magazine Da Màu publishing a special issue. Malaysia also anticipates an exciting month with two Malaysian-born women recently making the longlist for Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the shortlist for the Malaysian Migrant Poetry Competition due to be announced today. A second lockdown in France has instigated an appeal by publishing and bookselling unions to keep bookshops open—and the prestigious Goncourt prize has postponed announcing its 2020 winner until this happens. Read on to find out more! 

Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Vietnamese Diaspora

October 2020 is Children’s Literature Month for the Vietnamese diaspora. The Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) is currently hosting its first online, month-long Viet Book Fest, which features readings by authors, followed by interactive Q&A sessions, and culminating in a Halloween celebration and book auction on October 31. About thirty families have attended each session, and Facebook live engagement has reached close to 1,000 people.

Vietnamese diasporic literature, representing “the losing side,” suffers from double marginalization since it belongs neither to the Vietnamese literary tradition inside Vietnam nor its host country’s mainstream tradition. To resist this condition, Viet Book Fest titles share an endeavor analogous to translation: how to preserve the diasporic community’s collective memory and make it resonate in a transplanted, multivalent milieu.

Tran Thi Minh Phuoc’s Vietnamese Children’s Favorite Stories teaches foundational stories—many of which are epistemological—such as how the Vietnamese came to eat bánh chưng (“offering earth cake”) during the lunar new year, and how the monsoon season originated from an ancient rivalry between the Mountain Lord and the Sea Lord. Minh Le’s Green Lantern: Legacy reconciles conflicting cultural values, where a Western-based superhero myth centering on innovation and technological prowess is rewritten to include a Vietnamese viewpoint that incorporates community legacy and compassion. The idea of non-conforming identity as a magical construction is reflected in Bao Phi’s My Footprints, where a Vietnamese-American girl learns to take pride in her two moms and her heritage, as symbolized by her embrace of the fenghuang (phoenix) from East Asian mythology and the Sharabha from Hindu mythology. Lastly, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Ellison Nguyen’s Chicken of the Sea extols peace, where the victorious King of the Dog Knights grants amnesty to the defeated chicken pirates and welcomes them with a big party. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Woman by the River” by Nguyễn Đức Tùng

October 29, 2019  |  in Translations  |  by Thuy Dinh

I have already promised the baby to someone else, she told my mother, but don’t you worry I’ll save the next one for you.

This week’s Translation Tuesday features the harrowing work of Nguyễn Đức Tùng. Illustrative language supports a narrative of unbelievable realism, as the speaker relates the acts of necessity during the Vietnam War that reverberated through the coming generations. Specific lives are pulled out of the polarizing and stereotyped recounting typical of that terrible war, and the author seizes on every chance to give intimate details of lives affected and bowled over. The narrator’s travels to a forgotten home, occupied by a woman who cannot keep but only gives, mirrors and subverts colonial narratives of inaccessibility and backwardness. In the end, the “The Woman by the River” thematizes hope and testifies to the possibility of stories surviving war and the smothering narratives that surround it.

My mother needed to find someone who would sell her a child. It would not be for her; she had given birth to several children, been provided with both boys and girls. The child would be for her cousin who lived in town and had been married for ten years but was still barren. One time my mother took me to the river for this mission, thinking a five-year-old boy like me wouldn’t understand grown-up affairs, or if I learned anything I would forget it as soon as I grew up.

But my mother was wrong.

READ MORE…