Saturday, August 27, 2022
WITMonth Day 27 | A Bed for the King's Daughter by Shahla Ujayli
Friday, August 19, 2022
WITMonth Day 19 | The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk | Review
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
WITMonth Day 17 | The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana | Review
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
WITMonth Day 16 | Selling women in translation
Monday, August 15, 2022
WITMonth Day 15 | If Not, Winter by Sappho (tr. Anne Carson) | Minireview
Saturday, August 13, 2022
WITMonth Day 13 | Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin
Friday, August 12, 2022
WITMonth Day 12 | Why is WIT *still* so European?
Tuesday, August 9, 2022
WITMonth Day 9 | Far From My Father by Véronique Tadjo
Monday, August 8, 2022
WITMonth Day 8 | High versus low versus none
I've written about similar topics before, but it came up again earlier this week (as of scheduling this post in early July), and I find myself thinking about how limited the scope is for women writers in translation. How despite women writers existing in languages across the world, writing across all genres and literary styles, their works as translated (particularly into English, but not just) are often limited.
The highbrow/lowbrow debate is one that has existed for generations upon generations, and frankly it's one that no longer interests me. There is value in different forms and expressions of art, period. And there is value in different ways of experiencing said art, which may often come out in how "accessible" a work is and how it is meant to evoke a particular response in the reader. That's all there is to it. Every iteration of this same argument is only ever a rehashing of existing claims - for and against - that often deliberately ignore the value in the other school of thought. Yawn.
That being said, I feel that this is a conversation that still needs to be had within the context of WIT. The odd imbalance between high- and lowbrow literature in the translation world in general is worthy of its own discussion, but this is a WITMonth post, and so I'll focus on the unique state of WIT in this instance. Namely: WIT is extremely biased towards fiction (particularly contemporary fiction), with a smattering of poetry, nonfiction, and children's literature (and at most a handful of plays). This is in contrast to the general, English-language industry consensus by which fiction makes up a small fraction of annual releases. Now, obviously, the world of literature in translation is infinitely smaller than that of the wider English-language market, and indeed any language-specific market on its own. There are many books published per year that are unlikely to get translated, whether in the form of extremely specific academic nonfiction works, self-help books, cookbooks, self-published treatises, and so on. Moreover, I would expect a similar trend for books by men writers in translation, though perhaps somewhat mitigated by the fact that nonfiction in translation is overwhelmingly more likely to be by men, presumably narrowing the gap somewhat. (Because my data collection focuses on women wrtiers, I can't say for certain regarding men. Maybe someday!)
So let's focus for now on those WIT, whose works are overwhelmingly fiction, majority contemporary, and still overwhelmingly European (I will elaborate on the latter point in greater detail later in the month). Many of these works are what would be considered "literary" - fiction with a particular tenor and tone, often published by particular types of independent presses. Only a couple dozen are hardcore "genre" works - fantasy, sci-fi, thrillers, or romance - and even among these, there is often a softening of the genre's hard edges to make the book appear more accessible. (A personal note: I often override publisher definitions when it comes to books with "fantasy elements" that are nonetheless marketed as general fiction, especially when the description makes clear that it is, quite simply, a fantasy novel. Sorry, publishers!) Even more than genre literature, though, I am continuously baffled and stunned by the lack of children's literature by women writers in translation. How? Why?
And this leads me back to the topic of this post. In a nutshell: While that obnoxious debate takes place about whether it is anti-intellectual to reject highbrow books or snobbish to reject the lowbrow, women writers in translation aren't even being given a choice in the matter. While lowbrow books in English are frequently translated (and indeed, popular, widely-appreciated art from the Anglo world is a cultural staple worldwide, from literature to music through to film), there is no such equivalent space for women writers in translation. More than that, there isn't really space for the highbrow either; while it's not as if men in translation have tons of nonfiction coming out every month, women's nonfiction is just a blip on the radar, and rarely from a strictly academic bent (half of the women's nonfiction I've logged for the "WITMonth 2022 reading list" as of writing this post is in the form of memoirs, which fill a very different niche within the world of nonfiction).
The point of WITMonth is to highlight women writers from around the world. From my end, it's also an opportunity to reckon with the imbalances that also exist among the books that are translated. Particularly now, on year 9 of WITMonth and as many more publishers have gotten a lot better at publishing women writers, I find myself more frustrated by how limiting the range of books that get translated seems to be. When new readers want to take part in WITMonth and ask for "genre" type books, it's a struggle to recommend them. Want to get your 10-year old in on the action? Not all that many choices. Someone wants science nonfiction or books on history? Yeah, good luck with that.
It helps no one, to have a limited scope of books available, whether from a linguistic perspective, a cultural one, or stylistic. And WITMonth can't be limited like this, it just can't. I've said it before and I'll say it again - we shouldn't have go through all this effort, just to create other imbalances and biases in our reading. The world is rich with women writers from all walks of life, writing in all sorts of languages, telling all sorts of stories, and presenting them for all sorts of different audiences. These categories overlap and intersect in ways that are pivotal for our... existence as a culture, honestly. Even when engaging with "comfort", template-style stories, we still seek out the particular, unique twist that a new writer might bring an old story. We should continue striving toward a world in which we can actually get all of those stories.
Sunday, August 7, 2022
WITMonth Day 7 | Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge tr. Jeremy Tiang | Review
Thursday, August 4, 2022
WITMonth Day 4 | WIT in the curriculum
- Academic, college-level literature in an English-language context overwhelmingly means works originally written in English (or proto-English languages). Even when expressly seeking to broaden horizons (particularly through the lens of post-colonial literature), it is heavily dominated by works originally written in English.
- Most of the translated literature students had read was European and overwhelmingly written by men.
- Exceptions were often from multilingual countries.
- While it seems that there are some improvements over the decades, even very recent graduates described gender and translation gaps.
Monday, August 1, 2022
WITMonth Day 1 | Year 9!
It's August! Sometimes it feels like this blog only comes alive in August and that's certainly partly true, but August still remains my favorite time of year to settle down, write my thoughts about women writers in translation, and do the work. This year, I'm attending an intensive PhD-related course for the first two weeks of August, so I'm not going to be super involved the entire month, but I also don't need to be. WITmonth has grown to the point where it is wholly self-sustaining. Even without my input, announcement, or opinion, there are people who have made WITMonth plans, have their own WITMonth activities, and have spread the word. It's a beautiful thing to witness.
WITMonth is, as ever, an opportunity. It's an opportunity to remember why reading women writers in translation is important, why the imbalance is worth noting, why we need to continue striving toward parity and true equality. WITMonth is also an opportunity to read, certainly, and to promote and hype up authors who otherwise might not get a lot of attention. My own WITMonth reads this year are likely to be scattered and unexpected, though my reviews of books I've read in recent months (or last year) are going to be a bit more mainstream.
As always, WITMonth is also an opportunity in that it's not a race. It's not an obligation. There is no expectation of what anyone needs to do during WITMonth. Can't read a book by a woman writer in translation this month? No problem! Taking part in the discussion is already a huge step. Recognizing the problem, as well. I may not be able to read a book until mid-August, myself. That's okay! There is no one way to "do" WITMonth. In the meantime, I can simply say - here's to August, here's to WITMonth!
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
WITMonth Day 18 | Assessing Archipelago
This post is a long time coming. It is also an extremely difficult one to write, but here we are.
I have long prided my independence as a book blogger. This is something I've written about separately, here and there, but the truth is that I've always wanted to remain strongly independent as a blogger, because I do not want to feel beholden to anyone in the publishing industry. Much as I respect and admire many voices within that framework (publishers, writers, translators), I cannot view myself as one of its ranks. And because of this, I also feel comfortable ostensibly burning bridges where necessary. This is why I felt comfortable pushing back against Dalkey Archive's absurd argument that they had said enough on the matter of women in translation, back in 2015. (Note that the link to the original thread is now dead, but Dalkey's responses remain up.) When push comes to shove, my duty is to truth and reality, not to any one publisher or voice in the publishing industry.
I have, however, largely avoided challenging publishers publicly and directly. For years, I've politely reached out to publishers to get their statements regarding the dearth of women writers in their catalogs. Archipelago were one of those that ignored me most frequently, rather outrightly. Eventually, I got a placid reassurance that they are working on the matter. That was 2019. Now, in 2021, I can rest assured that the benefit of the doubt that I gave them at the time was unwarranted. Enough is enough.
I have purchased plenty of books from Archipelago Books over the years. I have also recommended them plenty, seeing as one of my absolute favorite books of the past decade is from their catalog (Scholastique Mukasonga's Cockroaches, and yes, you should read it if you haven't yet). I am also on their mailing list, and as such frequently receive their self-laudatory calls for donations and support. But we'll get to that shortly. The point is that I'm not writing this post out of a sense of cancelling Archipelago. I have no interest in folks no longer buying their books and penalizing their authors (particularly not their brilliant women writers), I am interested in Archipelago getting their act together and acknowledging and addressing their bias against women writers.
Here's the deal: I tallied up all of Archipelago's publications. Both in translation and not (though the overwhelming majority are in translation). Archipelago and their children's imprint Elsewhere Editions. All the books, of all times per the website. And the conclusion is stark: Archipelago Books apparently does not have any interest in publishing women writers. Among their publicly cataloged books, they have 153 books exclusively written by men, 1 anthology written by both men and women, and only 27 books exclusively written by women. For those who don't want to do the math, that's 15%. Or, in visual terms:
And at Elsewhere Editions, their children's literature imprint? Well, going by authors (which is how I judge the women in translation project), Elsewhere Editions has published a grand total of 15 books by men authors...
...oh, sorry, were you waiting for the number of books by women writers? You'll have to wait until they publish one. (Reminder: Elsewhere Editions was founded after I began the women in translation project/WITMonth and after several attempts to contact Archipelago about their massive gender imbalance in the parent catalog. They knew.) Let me reiterate this point: A children's literature imprint has somehow managed to publish 15 books of which none are by women writers. Children's. Literature. No women.
If I sound exasperated, it's because I am.
Archipelago are a disaster when it comes to publishing women writers, plain and simple. Across the board. No matter how generous I would like to be, it's simply impossible to come away from this data and not recognize that something very rotten lies as its core. Moreover, I have little desire to be particularly generous, given the ways in which Archipelago seem either willfully unaware (or cynically mocking) of their astonishing gender gap. Last year, I was stunned to receive an email regarding Elsewhere Editions, that, in their words, "respond[ed] to the urgent need for diversity in children's literature". This email was a call for donations, and possibly a successful one, based on the subsequent donation requests I have received since. It is difficult to express how unsettled this email left me; how, I wondered, could a publisher of all men writers from a majority Western/Northern European countries (overwhelmingly white, otherwise) cite diversity without feeling at least the tiniest bit of shame and self-awareness?
It's not the first time this sort of cynicism has emerged, at least on my part. Against all odds, Archipelago are sporadically involved in WITMonth, with occasional promotional tweets and discounts. Just this month, I received an email regarding their ongoing WITMonth discount, attached with what looks like a very respectable list of women writers, until you realize they included works with women translators, and also that the list is actually way shorter than the 80 or so which would bring them close to the parity mark. Women, it seems, are perhaps not worth actively seeking out and publicizing, but excellent as a marketing device?
I'm writing this all with the knowledge that my individual post won't make a difference. It's not as though I haven't reached out to Archipelago in the past. In the first few years of the women in translation project, they simply did not respond to my queries. In 2019, they gave me the laundry list of individual case studies, without acknowledging the broader picture and existing imbalances. And it is clear that they did not make any active effort to change matters. As of writing this post, the latest catalogue on Archipelago's website is their Fall 2020/Spring 2021 collection, which has 1 English-language work by a man writer, 8 books by men in translation, and 3 books by women in translation. 25%! Elsewhere Editions remains woman-less, though there is at least one woman illustrator (huzzah...?). At this point, I see little point in personally reaching out again.
As I mentioned at the top, Archipelago have published some of my favorite works of the past few years and have a remarkably interesting catalogue overall. It's important that we as readers acknowledge the good alongside the bad. But we as readers have to seriously address when publishers are simply not up to snuff. And we have to do something. We have to make sure that Archipelago understand that this isn't acceptable. The cherry-picking of individual women writers is not an acceptable response to a catalog of bias and omission.
I ask readers of this blog (and all WITMonth aficionados) to make your voices heard. Tweet at Archipelago. Write to them. Make clear that your support of their publications (whether during their donation drives or otherwise) is contingent on them actually publishing women writers. #PublishWIT, as far as I'm concerned, should go viral. While Archipelago are far from the only publishers out there to stumble in this regard, they are one of the most egregious. It's time for this to change.
In case anyone was wondering a bit more about the placement of the pen and the underlined line in the photo above, those represent the ten titles written by Karl Ove Knausgård. Alone.
Monday, August 16, 2021
WITMonth Day 16 | The backlog, or, the Classics
Monday, August 9, 2021
WITMonth Day 9 | 4 WITty science books
Sunday, August 8, 2021
WITMonth Day 8 | Night Birds and Other Stories by Khet Mar | Review

Saturday, August 7, 2021
WITMonth Day 7 | Identities | Thoughts
I am precisely halfway through Nina Bouraoui's Tomboy (translated from French by Marjorie Attignol Salvodon and Jehanne-Marie Gavarini), not only practically in page count, but at the novella's shift in location. This seemingly semi+-autobiographical work (the main character is named Nina Bouraoui, and like the author is the daughter of an Algerian father and a French mother, first growing up in Algeria) opens in Algeria, and then moves to France; I have paused reading just at the onset of the "Rennes" section. The book is interesting for a lot of reasons, but one of the most obvious is how it is making me contemplate identity and authorship.
From the onset, Tomboy makes a point of discussing identity. It's an integral part of the book, one I imagine I will discuss in more depth once I actually review it. For now, the part that struck me was that this novella - half of which takes place in Algeria, written by an author who is clearly blurring the lines between her own experiences and that of her narrator, explicitly discussing the feeling of being neither here nor there (neither Algerian nor French) - was published in the US under a series titled "European Women Writers". While Bouraoui's author blurb makes a point of emphasizing her origins (see my above description of the author/Tomboy's narrator), there's something a little off-putting in how the book's meta-narrative places Bouraoui firmly in the French camp. She is a European author! Perhaps a European author who struggles with her identity, but still.
Author identity and origin is something that I personally find fascinating (maybe it's my own history that drives this...?), but it can often feel like a game in which we cherry-pick identities and definitions for our own means. Do immigrant writers represent countries and cultures left behind, or those new homes they have embraced? Refugee writers? Those who comes from multiple backgrounds all in one, who shuffled around during childhood, whose families have always fallen across borders? Can identities be mixed and contradictory and all-encompassing?
I began to think about other authors who similarly straddle different identities. I thought of Scholastique Mukasonga, whose Igifu I finished reading just before starting Tomboy. Mukasonga is framed as a French Rwandan writer, but of her four books translated into English so far (which you, dear reader, should absolutely read, immediately, right now), none are particularly French. France features in parts, yes, as do other countries, but her work strongly centers Rwanda and a Rwandan Tutsi identity. Yet Mukasonga lives in France and has done so for decades. Is there any identity I can choose as a reader that will not be an imposition of sorts?
It rarely matters, not in any way that means something to my life. But even something silly like the #WITMonth Bingo I came up with (which I increasingly find flaws with) seems to suggest clean-cut author/book identities. Am I able to check off the "North African" box by reading Tomboy, belonging as it does to the "European Women Writers" series? And of course this question of identity extends to other fields as well - how do I reconcile the gendered nature of WIT with my desire to include non-binary writers? Identities can also shape how I interpret a work as a reader, whether I want it to or not.
Identities are, of course, complicated things. This is something I've wrestled with many times over the years, in regards to different aspects of my own life. It's something I imagine I will continue to wrestle with, as my own contradictory self-identities continue to clash and change and grow. And regarding the authors that I read, I think that the simplest course of action is to acknowledge that there is no single answer. Women writers in translation are often defined in all sorts of ways that seem most likely to "succeed", simply by virtue of their general marginalization in the larger literary landscape. Herta Müller is German and Romanian by turns, depending who you ask. Scholastique Mukasonga is "French Rwandan". Nina Bouraoui can write an entire book about an identity somewhere between France and Algeria while being neither (fictional? autobiographical? neither?) and still be classified as a European writer. What are the identities of writers whose homelands no longer exist? Who are we to determine them? In a world that does have increasingly blurred borders and identities (whether nationalistic, linguistic, gendered, or otherwise), what does it mean to even define these concepts?
I doubt I'll have answers to these questions any time soon. I'm not sure I would even want to, to be honest. I suppose I just need to keep reading and thinking...
Friday, August 6, 2021
WITMonth Day 6 | No One Writes Back by Jang Eun-jin
No One Writes Back is one of the ultimate WITMonth books. Why? I purchased it during the first ever WITMonth - August 2014, way way back in the earliest days of the women in translation project. I recall purchasing it alongside another book from Dalkey's Library of Korean Literature (Lonesome You, a collection that left very little impression upon me), and it's languished on my shelves for years and years since I purchased it. Somehow, it became one of those books that simply blends into the background of the bookshelf. It was always there, and it gradually became one of those always there books that doesn't seem very attractive and readable. There was always going to be something newer and more appealing. Not to mention that it was never a particularly popular book to begin with, and as such was easy to ignore.
I don't know what brought it off my shelves a few weeks ago, but goodness. Goodness. I'm so glad I finally read it.
No One Writes Back (translated from Korean by Jung Yewon) surprised me from the start. Something about its tone is just so confident, so strong, and so clearly defined that I was a bit taken aback. This was the book I'd been avoiding for so long...? Okay then. The novel immediately sets its stage with the narrator informing us that he's left home, he's a traveler, and he's traveling with Wajo (his dog). Bit by bit, we learn more about who this man is, who his friends are, and what makes him tick. As he goes from city to city, motel to motel, he assigns numbers to the people he meets and then writes them letters. Letter-writing is something pivotal to this novel, reflective of an almost naïve adherence to a past that is quickly disappearing (and has disappeared even more since the novel's original publication in 2009).
The narrator soon meets a woman on his journey, but she is not there as a love interest or narrative-altering presence. Rather, she is writer and curious mirror to the narrator. The two both travel, they both try to make peace with their home, and they both interact with their environment in a unique way that shapes (and is shaped by) their worldview. The writer seeks to keep traveling as long as she's still working on her latest work; the narrator seeks to keep traveling as long as he hasn't yet received any letters of response from his many correspondents. The two travel together for a while and their relationship is fascinating to watch, because it's always still very clearly about the narrator. He is the center of this story, someone who is lonely and yet not alone, alone at times and yet not lonely.
By the midway point of the novel, I was certain I was reading a good book, but something about it felt hollow. The writing is excellent, the character designs precise and clear, and the pacing extremely direct, but I couldn't for the life of me tell where the story was heading (or if, indeed, it was heading anywhere). I wasn't sure what was keeping me reading, but it didn't seem to be the sort of situation to quit. I resigned myself to the idea that No One Writes Back would have some sort of placid, dissatisfying ending, like so many other well-built novels.
But no, this is so much better than that. With a precision that made me feel like rereading the whole novel as soon as I'd finished it, the pieces fell together into one of the more beautiful, emotionally affecting endings to a book I've read in a long time. That sounds so cliched, but it's true - it wasn't about whether aspects of the ending were sad (and yes, aspects were), it was about the way everything fit together and completed each other. No One Writes Back not only did a brilliant job of justifying almost every one of its pages prior, it also did so in a truly uplifting, positive, and life-affirming way. I finished the book feeling like I'd just had something wonderful open up before me, and while I don't want to spoil what made the ending so beautiful for me, suffice to say that it inspired something pretty good in me.
By the end, I didn't just enjoy No One Writes Back, I loved it. I loved what it sparked in me. I loved how it made me think. I loved how it unfolded and grew. I loved how its technical pieces didn't mask or try to replace its emotional ones. I loved how it made me want to read (and write) so much more. I loved how much it made me feel.
I am also ultimately grateful for how long the book spent on my shelves. I usually bemoan books that I read at the wrong times and ask myself whether I might have liked the book better at a different stage of life (or even on a literal different day). No One Writes Back probably wouldn't have meant the same to me seven years ago, when I first purchased it. I might have liked it, no doubt, but I think that initial hollow feeling would have dominated. Now? The book fit in perfectly.
As to you, dear reader? I suggest you give it a try. I think there's a decent chance you will find it as beautiful as I did.
Thursday, August 5, 2021
WITMonth Day 5 | Voices on the outskirts
It occurred to me at some point in late 2020 - just around the same time that I was formulating the idea behind what would become the DailyWIT - that there were a lot of Hebrew-language women writers that I had never read. Of course that's an obvious statement; there will always be more writers to read than time to do so, and I will inevitably miss out on a lot of great art. But the thought/realization that I had was focused less on individual writers, as much as writers of different and wildly diverse backgrounds. It occurred to me that even without the biases that are set in place in translation to other languages, I was exposed to and reading writers (men and women, to be perfectly honest) of very specific, typically quite privileged backgrounds. And of course that this was the case with the books that I was reading in translation (whether to English or to Hebrew).
One of the things I have tried to do with the DailyWIT is include writers from all sorts of different backgrounds. That might sound a bit trivial, but the truth is that translation as a field is not always the most... let's say "generous" toward those writers who aren't already part of the mainstream. There are understandable risks associated with any translation; there is often little motivation for publishers to try to translate and publish a work that doesn't have some sort of proven track record or high chance of success. So if you're starting out from a place of literary marginalization, you're going to face steep odds when it comes to translation.
This is part of what drives the women in translation project at large, of course, but it cuts across so many different types of backgrounds and experiences. At the beginning of the year, I asked folks for recommendations of authors they might like to see included in the DailyWIT, encouraging the inclusion of writers who maybe aren't translated at all. A friend messaged me with a list of Indonesian writers, specifically, and noted a disproportionate lack of Muslim Indonesian writers translated/published in English, despite Indonesia being a Muslim-majority country. Their observation is one I haven't necessarily delved into in much depth, but it did make me think about religious, linguistic, cultural, and ethnic biases across the world.
But of course, those biases are not fixed in and of themselves. One region's dominant culture is another's minority. The question of which voices are published and translated is one that cannot be homogenized across the globe; every country and region will have its own nuances and complexities. In some countries, "immigrants" may be the most prosperous class. There are states that are ruled by regional ethnic minorities. The extraordinary range of experiences and existences across the world make it utterly impossible to set clear definitions for what the literary outskirts may be for any region.
Which is why, as always, my solution is quite simply... more. Let's make sure that there is space for all of these different backgrounds and voices. Let's make sure that we're not just letting those voices from the very top continue to filter through, but that we also recognize that there are always going to be relative outskirts and writers working there. That translation can't exist in the context of narrow definitions, but must broach more borders than linguistic alone (and also there - recognize literature from under-translated languages!!!). As ever: more.