Posts filed under 'female writers'

A Conversation on Kurdish Translation with Farangis Ghaderi

Translation is a commitment—a way of illustrating my commitment to making Kurdish literature known.

We speak here about the practice and politics of Kurdish translation, female representation in Kurdish literature, and the future of Kurdish literary works, culture, and understandings through digital archival projects. 

Holly Mason Badra: Can you talk about the project and translation process for Women’s Voices from Kurdistan: A Selection of Kurdish Poetry

Farangis Ghaderi: Women’s Voices from Kurdistan was the result of a collective initiative with my colleagues Clémence Scalbert Yucel and Yaser Hassan Ali. The idea behind it was that, as scholars and researchers of Kurdish literature, we were very aware of the invisibility of Kurdish literature in the world literary arena. The translation of Kurdish literature is emerging but still not comparable with other Middle Eastern languages. At Exeter, there were a number of Ph.D. students and researchers working specifically on Kurdish literature and we had been engaged in translation as part of our research, but these translations often remained unpublished (in theses or dissertations). Occasionally, some translations were published in scholarly publications, but they were only excerpts of the literary pieces and not the entire work. At the time, none of us considered ourselves literary translators. 

We also thought about how works published in academic outlets don’t reach a larger public audience. Reflecting on these issues and realizing our potentials, we hosted a translation workshop in 2017 that was led by Dr. Yucel and made possible by an outreach grant (by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq; BISI), where Ph.D. students working on Kurdish literature came together with researchers at the Center for Kurdish Studies at Exeter and colleagues in translation studies. Each participant had their own selections, but the overall theme was gender, with preference for female poets. Together, we practiced translation and held discussions for two days. After this workshop, Clémence, Yaser, and I continued to meet, discuss, and work on the translations and polish them. We presented our translations in a number of festivals in the UK and began thinking about publishing them. We then approached Transnational Press London about publishing the collection, and they were very enthusiastic about it. 

It was important for us to publish in an outlet that allows the publication of the original Kurdish language as well as the English translation. The collection includes poems from the nineteenth century to contemporary female poetry, written in various Kurdish dialects (Gorani, Kurmanji, Badini, Sorani) and in Arabic. 

HMB: When did you first start working in translation and what has that journey been like for you? 

FG: I started translating into English while pursuing my Ph.D. My research was on the emergence of modern Kurdish poetry. I had to translate classical and modern poetry in three dialects (Kurmanji, Sorani, Gorani) as part of literary analysis. The workshop I described above was foundational for me as a translator—following the workshop, Dr. Yucel and I conducted a research project on English translations of Kurdish literature which is now published. Both the workshop and the research project helped me to become aware of trends in English translations of Kurdish literature—the biases that translation can produce or reproduce and the politics of translation itself. I became more aware of the question of access and the politics of access. How a certain group of translators—in our case, a group of mostly Kurdish researchers at Exeter—were not thinking of ourselves as translators even though we were translating. Translation was part of our job. I began thinking about questions of confidence, exclusions, access (which is limited for Kurdish scholars). The journey has been one of gaining confidence and understanding what translation involves. It has been an educational process, too. 

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“Queen of the Czech Comic”: An Interview with Lucie Lomová

To what extent are we shaped by the society we live in? How far are we willing to swim against the current?

In the first of two interviews on the thriving Czech comic art scene for the Asymptote blog, we introduce Lucie Lomová, artist, writer, and author of numerous comic books for both children and adults. Comic art and graphic novels are increasingly gaining recognition as a serious art and literary form; since the start of the millenium, the Czech Republic has seen a boom in the genre. In the second interview, two Czech literature scholars will paint a more comprehensive picture of the scene for Asymptote readers. Dubbed “the queen of the Czech comic,” Lomová is the best-known woman comic book author of the new, postcommunist generation, with three coveted Muriel Awards, including two—for original script and best original Czech comic—for her graphic novel, Divoši (Savages) to be published in English translation by Asymptote’s Editor-at-Large for Slovakia, Julia Sherwood, and Peter Sherwood. We are delighted to introduce Lucie Lomová to Asymptote’s readers through this interview, conducted by Julia over email.

JS: You are a graduate of the Theatre faculty at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU), but you switched to writing and drawing comics in the early 1990s. In those days, this kind of career change required quite a lot of courage—you said in an interview: “To choose comics as one’s profession was rather like trying to make a living by catching earthworms.” What motivated you to take the risk? 

LL: Did I really say that? Perhaps I wouldn’t use that comparison now, but it‘s true that in those days comic art was a totally marginal and underrated genre, with publication opportunities few and far between. But, it didn’t really require any special courage on my part. The year of the Velvet Revolution, 1989—a turning point in every respect for everyone—saw the publication of my first comic strip about Anča and Pepík, a couple of mice kids. My sister Ivana and I had worked on it together for three years, writing the story and doing the drawings. I had just graduated in dramaturgy and started working in a theatre in Šumperk, a small town about 200 kilometres east of Prague. When the Velvet Revolution came, I decided to return to Prague, although I didn’t really have a clear idea about what I was going to do. I wrote art reviews for newspapers, drew cartoons, and pondered what I should apply myself to in all this new freedom—just then, the children’s comic journal Čtyřlístek (The Four-Leaved Clover) invited me to write and draw more stories about Anča and Pepík for them, this time on my own, as my sister had moved on to other things. In the summer of 1990, I hitchhiked to Greece with my boyfriend. We were penniless, but overjoyed and excited about all the possibilities that had opened up before us. I remember that it was during the long rides in strangers’ cars that the ideas for the first three stories came to me, and once I was back home, I got drawing. For the following ten years, drawing comics for Čtyřlístek was my bread and butter.

Anca&PepikIlu02

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Translation Tuesday: “Invisibles” by Eszter T. Molnár

One girl started giggling nervously—another buried her face in her hands.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, psychological horror meets scathing social commentary in Eszter T. Molnár’s “Invisibles.” From the first paragraph we’re primed by imagery that’s both mundane and otherworldly—cupcake perfume and short skirts appear alongside a “vibrating blue” sky and decorative figures of preternatural monsters. Our protagonist, an exchange student seeking solace in drinking and hookups, reluctantly attends a Halloween party. But when a horrific discovery is made, the party is split between deniers and . . . deniers? Our protagonist’s indifference (itself demonstrating the benumbing effects of violence), plus the partygoers’ inebriated hostility and homophobia, and the ever-present face of youthful vacuity and diffusion of responsibility, set the stage for a tragedy that reads more like a nightmare. An important voice in contemporary Hungarian literature, Molnár addresses gender violence and domestic abuse in vivid, psychologically nuanced detail. “Invisibles” is one such study on how we interpret and (mis)handle horrific acts of violence.

The sky was still vibrating blue, but the shadows were preparing themselves along the base of the houses. As he wound his way through leaping skeletons, witches, and vampires, Tamás caught scent of the girls’ cupcake perfume. He stopped in front of a shabby tenement house. Bikes were parked along the sidewalk, in the street, even in the flowerbeds. He pushed open the door, stepped into the inner courtyard, and beside the trash cans, he leaned his bike against the wall, next to Varja’s. Her bike was decorated with plastic flowers. Please don’t leave trash next to the containers, put it in the bins! was written across the crimson sign in white letters.

He rang the bell three times, but the tune of “Für Elise” was lost in the music swelling up from inside. He started shivering. His damp sweater was sticking to his back, underneath his coat. It was a stupid idea to come, he thought, and he turned to leave, when the door burst open, and a sheet swept down over his head. They pulled him into the vestibule, circled around him, pushed him back and forth to each other. They were the spiders, he was the prey. Even though he’d expected something like this, his pulse went into a frenzy. He struggled helplessly, the blood throbbing in his ears stifled out the shrieking and choked laughter. He crashed into the wall, and fell to the ground. READ MORE…

“Faithful to the imagination”: A Review of Silvina Ocampo’s Forgotten Journey

Reading her short stories has the effect of seeing an enlarged eye behind a held-up magnifying glass.

Forgotten Journey by Silvina Ocampo, translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan, City Lights Books, 2019

Silvina Ocampo (1903-93) was once called “the best-kept secret of Argentine letters.” Luckily for Anglophone readers, however, more of her work is being gradually revealed, most recently with two publications by City Lights Books: The Promise and Forgotten Journey. The Promise is a novella which Ocampo spent twenty-five years completing, whilst Forgotten Journey, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan, is her debut piece of fiction, a collection of twenty-eight short stories originally published in 1937 as Viaje olvidado.

Ocampo may be under-recognized outside of Argentina, but during her lifetime she was part of an elite literary and intellectual circle formed by Jorge Luis Borges. Along with Borges, and her eventual husband Adolfo Bioy Casares, she collaborated on a famous anthology of Fantastic Literature and formed friendships with authors such as Virginia Woolf, Paul Valéry, Lawrence of Arabia, Federico García Lorca, and Gabriela Mistral. She was also a visual artist, having trained in Paris under Fernand Léger and the surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico.

These surrealist influences are evident in her writing, and there is undoubtedly a fairytale quality to Ocampo’s stories: fairytale in the sense of its truest origins—innocence is flooded with the dark and the ominous, childhood confronts and battles adulthood. Throughout Ocampo’s tales, there is always a moment when death enters, knocking the innocent out. And these stories are dark: a horse is whipped to death, a servant murders the young son of her mistress, a woman’s pet is brutally killed by a jealous lover. The duality of dream and nightmare is always present, similar to writers such as Leonora Carrington, Angela Carter, and Clarice Lispector. In a 1982 interview with Noemí Ulla, Ocampo says that Lispector wanted to meet her in Buenos Aires, and Ocampo was devastated not to have done so before Lispector’s death in 1977. READ MORE…

Mother-Daughter Collaboration: An Interview with Jean Paira-Pemberton and Catherine Piron-Paira

This was what we could share together at this time in her life; I think it added much tenderness between us.

I met Catherine Piron-Paira last June in Paris at the annual poetry market, and at the time was already aware of Éditions des Lisières, a remarkable independent press committed to translation and multilingualism. I had recently read their latest bilingual English-French release, Seeds in My Ground/Ma terre ensemencée by Jean Paira-Pemberton, and discovered that the translator (or co-translator), Catherine Piron-Paira, was the author’s daughter. Many poems were substantially re-written in their French translation, suggesting a very creative working relationship. The press’ website says the text is “adapted” rather than merely translated, and the book itself indicates that the French version was developed “in collaboration” between Jean and Catherine. A few months later, all three of us scheduled a video chat. Jean and Catherine were then sent the condensed and edited transcript of this interview for approval and final edits, and it is now our great pleasure to bring it to Asymptote’s readers.

Lou Sarabadzic (LS): In the foreword, Catherine, you explain that your mother, Jean Paira-Pemberton, “is a nomad between two languages, two cultures, two countries.” Could you tell us a bit more?

Catherine Piron-Paira (CPP): Mum settled in France in 1952, but she continued going to England for reasons of both business and pleasure. She also went from Strasbourg to Saverne every day for work. There was a place where we went for holidays: Chapeau Cornu, near Lyon. We used to go from Strasbourg to Lyon, from Lyon to Strasbourg. As for “nomad,” how do you feel about that?

Jean Paira-Pemberton (JPP): Well, I have a relationship now with French, which is almost like the relationship with a mother tongue. I think I am completely bilingual. I can use both languages for practically everything, except poetry. Poetry is only in English.

LS: Why do you think that is?

JPP: Because English is my mother tongue, and I have wanted to be a poet ever since I learnt how to write, so it goes back to way before I learnt French. I started to learn French in secondary school, when I was eleven. It is very much a second language. I have never written poetry in French. I have written lots of other texts in French, of course, as part of my job; I was a university teacher, and I published articles and all sorts of things on linguistics in French–my thesis about John Clare’s life was in French. But not poetry. READ MORE…

The Personal Apocalyptic Journey: On Liliana Ursu’s Clay and Star

Only long, silent, patient, and focused respites spent really close to things . . . will perhaps spawn such indelible images.

Clay and Star: Selected Poems of Liliana Ursu, translated from the Romanian by Mihaela Moscaliuc, Etruscan Press, 2019

With an impressive record of thirteen collections in Romanian and five collections in English translation, it is no wonder Liliana Ursu has now arrived with a generous (over seventy pages) collection of selected poetry, published by Etruscan Press in Mihaela Moscaliuc’s translation.

It is just that, unlike your usual (American) volume of selected poetry, the book does not divide the poems by their appearance in previous collections, but simply lists their titles in the contents, every now and then mentioning under their last line where and when they were written. Other poems mention the location in the very title—Văratec Monastery in northern Romania, for instance, is both frequently present and representative of the poetics, but Sibiu, Bucharest, Boston, and San Francisco also appear—while others are dedicated, in their epigraphs, to people met in those places. The book thus amounts to a sort of journey that, while capturing fleeting specifics of literal locales in snapshots, is most prevalently a progress of the soul.

The confessional therefore sets the tone, but is at the same time placed in multifaceted perspectives that render the speaker both observant and observed. The title of a poem meaningfully speaks—for instance—of the “poem composed while being watched by a bird.” The multiple angles are accompanied by a functional synaesthesia that brings together the senses and speech alike. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Most Solemn Song” and “Asleep in a Haze” by Nadia Anjuman

No one reads the book of your heart’s happy anthems

This week’s Translation Tuesday features the devotional work of Nadia Anjuman. Under pressure, the poems sing out—but not so much to the divine Patriarch as do many religious songs. Created under political pressure in Afghanistan, Anjuman’s poems speak to a feminine subject free from repressive structures. When she says “If one strand of hope finds me” one gets the impression that the “me” is the subject who speaks free of the restraints of strict gender norms. The self is shuttled into wispy metaphors of string and haze, surviving, on the back of lyric, as opaque lightness. The style of Islamic mystics is breathlessly combined with resolutely feminist concerns—the result is a dire urgency. Anjuman ultimately died under the same oppression she was writing against, and her poems give testament to the pervasiveness and resilience of song. The stakes are high here—read carefully. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Literary awards and festivals abound in this week's news from Argentina, Sweden, and the UK.

This week our reporters bring you news of Sweden’s reaction to last week’s Nobel Prize in Literature announcement by the Swedish Academy, the FILBA international festival in Buenos Aires, as well as the surprise of the Booker Prize winner(s!) in the UK.

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

Since the announcement of the 2018 and 2019 Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature last week, the subsequent debate shows no sign of receding. Before the announcement, literary Nobel Prize discussions within Sweden focused on whether awarding a 2018 prize was good for the world of literature or bad because it would smooth over the Swedish Academy’s connection to misconducts.

After the announcement of Polish Olga Tokarczuk (“Flights”) and Austrian Peter Handke as the two most recent literary Nobel Prize Laureates, however, the pros and cons of announcing a 2018 laureate has waned in the shadow of the controversial choice of Handke. The disagreement in Sweden centers on whether Handke’s political standpoint is misunderstood—if he has simply been naive and used by others, if he is an apologist of war crimes—or if awarding Handke is correct on solely literary merits and that disregarding politics is possible. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Bucharest makes waves and the Man Booker International hits headlines.

News of the Man Booker International winner has made its way around the senses of the literary-minded public around the world, but we are here with a personal take on its winner, and why this unprecedented win has earned its accolades and perhaps could also potentially earn a place on your shelf. Also on our list is the incredibly poetic nation of Romania, who presented a manifold of verse champions for Bucharest’s International Poetry Festival. Reporting from amongst the greats are our editors at the front.

Barbara Halla, Editor-at-Large, covering the Man Booker International 2019

I was many things the night of the Man Booker International announcement, but gracious wasn’t one of them. Before the announcement was made on May 21, I wrote for Asymptote about my thoughts on the longlist and (correctly) predicted that Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth and published by Scottish indie Sandstone Press, would win it. Celestial Bodies represents many firsts in the prize’s history: it is the first book written in Arabic to win the prize, as well as the first book by an Omani author (in fact, Jokha Alharthi is the first female Omani author to ever be translated into English) and with a Scottish press to do so. Although its win was a bit of a surprise to others (being as it was surrounded by books receiving a lot more press and praise), the judges seemed quite taken with it. Talking to Five Books, and even during her announcement, chair of the judges, Bettany Hughes, highlighted one particular line from Celestial Bodies that she believed embodies the spirit of the prize itself: “We get to know ourselves better in new, strange places.”

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In Conversation: Duanwad Pimwana, author of Bright and Arid Dreams

My intention for every creation is to find a balance in which all elements fit in their own suitable places.

Duanwad Pimwana is one of the preeminent voices in contemporary Thai literature. As enigmatic as she is celebrated, Pimwana is known for her incisive social observation. Having built her career initially as a journalist and short-story writer, she’s now published nine books in Thai, spanning a variety of genres. Two of these, the novel Bright and the short-story collection Arid Dreams, will be published by Two Lines Press and the Feminist Press respectively this April. Both texts were translated by Mui Poopoksakul.

Pimwana’s narratorial perspective is that of a fly on the wall, but one with a loud, pumping, mammalian heartbeat. She is a master of conveying the melancholy contradictions that characterize human existence. Her characters often frustrate the readers’ sympathy, blurring the boundaries between such facilities as “protagonist,” “antagonist,” and “supporting character.” We take on their coexistent hope and despair, accompanying them as they’re tossed to the mercy of chance and fortune.

In Bright, six-year-old Kampol Changsamran gets left behind by both of his parents when an episode of violence and infidelity drives them both to flee their village and reestablish their lives elsewhere with other partners. It’s sometimes easy to forget just how young little Kampol is; he steps into his newfound freedom with a sense of responsibility, resourcefulness, and wisdom that transcends his age. But in other moments, it’s all too clear that his maturity is a function of necessity. His dearest wish is to be once again embraced by the love and security of family. His neighbors, meanwhile, most of them hardly able to fill their own bellies, show a full spectrum of responses to their new collective charge.

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Universal Things: An Interview with Esther Gerritsen

In the Netherlands, we often make the mistake of thinking that the emancipation of women has been completely achieved.

Boekenweek is a week-long festival of Dutch-language literature held annually in the Netherlands since 1932. Aside from the now legendary Boekenweek ball in Amsterdam, readings, panels, and other literary events are organized throughout the Netherlands and Flanders, and a prominent writer is commissioned to write a novella which is then gifted to the public during the ten-day festival. In 2016, Dutch writer Esther Gerritsen was given the honor of writing the Boekenweek novella, one of only two women to do so in the past eighteen years. This year, Gerritsen’s novel Craving was one of several recently published Dutch-language novels in translation featured at the World Editions Boekenweek celebration at Flanders House in New York City. One of the most celebrated novelists in the Netherlands, Gerritsen also works as a screenwriter and columnist and is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2014 Frans Kellendonk prize for her entire oeuvre. Craving, artfully translated by Michele Hutchison, is Gerritsen’s meticulous excavation of a complex mother-daughter relationship which is further complicated when the daughter moves back into her childhood home to take care of her dying mother. In honor of Boekenweek, Asymptote asked Esther Gerritsen to share her thoughts on Craving, radical thinkers, and gender equity in the Dutch-language literary world.

-Sarah Timmer Harvey, New York, April 2019

STH: Craving opens with a powerful scene in which the mother, Elisabeth, spots her daughter biking on a busy street in Amsterdam and decides it is the right moment to tell her that she is dying. Immediately, the reader is made aware that the mother isn’t neurotypical and that the relationship between mother and daughter is quite strained. What drew you to these characters and inspired their story?

EG: I started writing about the mother, Elisabeth, first. I wanted to write about ‘stuff.’ Objects, materials, the love human beings have for things. I originally had Elisabeth talking posthumously about all the things in her life, from the first blanket she’d slept under and her childhood toys to the furniture she owned when she was older, even the bed on which she died. In her version of heaven, everything she ever possessed was there, new and complete; shoes without scratches, puzzles with no missing pieces—an ideal, silent world filled with beautiful stuff. Of course, then the story became very . . . silent. And I thought: for a person who likes quietness, order, and perfection, what’s the worst thing that could happen? I knew then that she should have a child—and that’s where the daughter comes in. Coco is her mother’s opposite, chaotic and messy. They live in different worlds, but both have the best intentions and would love to be closer, but are just too dissimilar. When the mother is dying, and the daughter is already an adult, they try to form a closer relationship before it’s too late and end up tormenting each other with their good intentions. Coco and Elisabeth really can’t stand one another, but because they are family, they are inextricably linked. READ MORE…

Barren Landscape: Who is Afraid of Albanian Women?

For many Albanian women, the domestic is a space of terror and violence; what could be more heroic than surviving and writing in spite of that?

How is it that a formal literary curriculum can almost completely erase the works of a group of proficient, formidable writers? In this essay, Barbara Halla, Asymptote’s Editor-at-Large for Albania, asks this question of her country’s educational system, while also discussing and revealing the extensive work of Albania’s female writers. 

I could make a long list of my grievances about the Albanian educational system, but I have generally appreciated the breadth of my literary education. In four years of high school, I was assigned some eighty books to read, spanning Western literature from Antiquity (starting with The Epic of Gilgamesh) to Shakespeare, Hugo, Hemingway, and Márquez.

I no longer retain the official list of my required reading, but it is not hard to find a contemporary equivalent. I graduated from high school in 2011, and in eight years, the list selected by the Ministry of Education does not seem to have changed much, which I find questionable. While I am grateful for my literary education, with the years I have become acutely aware of its flaws, the most egregious of which is the complete dismissal of women writers, especially Albanian women. Dozens of books, an entire year dedicated to Albanian literature during my senior year, and yet I graduated without having heard the name of a single Albanian woman writer. It was almost as if they didn’t exist.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

In this week’s dispatches, literary highlights from Romania, Singapore, and the United States!

This week, join three Asymptote staff members as they report the latest in literary news from around the world. From the legacy of Romanian poet Emil Brumaru, to new releases of poetry, literary competitions, and the Iowa City Book Festival, there’s plenty to catch up and reflect on.

MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova, reporting from Romania and Moldova

The most resounding recent piece of literary news in Romania is the passing of poet Emil Brumaru (born eighty years ago in Bessarabia, present-day Republic of Moldova), one of the greatest Romanian poets of the past fifty years. Superlative eulogies have inundated literary magazines and wide circulation newspapers alike, foregrounding both the vastness and the subtlety of the oeuvre, while also deploring the disappearance of a widely popular presence prolifically active in literary publications and even social media. Brumaru’s obsessively erotic verse, ranging from the profane and the pornographic to the angelic and the (still physically) mystical, comports a richness of nuances and a chameleonic craftsmanship that perhaps explain why such a huge voice remains for now largely unknown to the English-speaking world, except for a handful of poems translated in a couple of anthologies, graduate theses, or casual blogs.

While women are arguably the only—inextinguishable, nonetheless—subject of Brumaru’s poetry, women writers themselves are taking centre stage in Romanian letters as well. The first edition of the Sofia Nădejde literary awards—curated by poet and radio show host Elena Vlădăreanu—was in that respect a remarkable milestone. While doing justice to novels or collections by established writers such as Gabriela Adameșteanu and widely known young poets and critics like Teodora Coman, the judges also picked for the debut collection award a release significantly titled Kommos. A Hysterectomy Procession by Iuliana Lungu, an up-and-coming poet who has already won support and even accolades from living legends such as Angela Marinescu and Nora Iuga.

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