WITMonth 2016 is almost over and there will be plenty of discussions to be had later as well, but before we go... a brief thought on genres. I love seeing all the books people have chosen to read for WITMonth and I love seeing how very different many of them are. But... I cannot help but notice how most of us have remained comfortably within the world of simple fiction.
I don't for a moment want to take away from those readers who have spent the past month championing SF women in translation or historical fiction by women in translation or poetry by women in translation or plays by women in translation. On the contrary, you're all wonderful. It's just that I once again look back on a WITMonth that - despite being the most active and successful month by far of the past three years! - remained generally cloistered within a certain community.
Like I've said before and will say again - the women in translation project is meant to be as broad as possible. That means it's meant to cover as many possible languages and as many possible genres and as many possible readers as possible. I love the progress we've made on the first front... what about the next?
This is probably not a community I actually belong to; I can't stand Twitter, so I wind up isolating myself a little. I'm not sure what you mean by "simple fiction." Is that all kinds of fiction that aren't a particular genre like SF/F?
ReplyDeleteIf I'd known about WIT August more than a couple of days beforehand, I would have planned more; this time, I just went over to my library shelf and picked the books that were on it. I seem to be in a very Slavic mood right now, so if I'd planned I would have gotten hold of "Voices From Chernobyl," which I really want to read. But I'm very happy with my two books-- "Baba Yaga Laid an Egg" and "The Big Green Tent." Oh, and now that I look back, "Last Tales" too, which is Danish instead.
http://howlingfrog.blogspot.com/2016/08/baba-yaga-laid-egg.html
http://howlingfrog.blogspot.com/2016/08/last-tales.html
http://howlingfrog.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-big-green-tent.html