WITMonth Day 1 | Year five begins!

Year five. Year five!

Happy WITMonth, everybody! If you're here, you're most likely interested in joining in on WITMonth this year... and for good reason, too! As you probably already know, far too few women (and trans and nb) writers are translated into English, or across different languages (other than translations from English). Despite the wide range and brilliance of women writers from around the world, readers (particularly English-language readers) are too often limited in the scope of books and works by women writers to which we are exposed. WITMonth seeks to correct that.

As in previous years, I will try to keep a steady flow of posts, updates, reviews, recommendation lists and more, here on the blog (as well as on Instagram and Twitter, under @readwit and @read_wit accordingly). As in previous years, I welcome all conversation, debate, and discussion about the problems women in translation face today, as well as potential solutions.

From a big-picture perspective, I have two main goals this year. As some of you might recall, I wrote a post a few months ago about how I felt the WIT and feminist movements needed to have a greater overlap. This remains my top priority for WITMonth as well, with the hope that more and more feminist readers who do not typically read many translations or works from non-English sources will broaden their horizons to include all parts of the world. This is something I feel very strongly about and will continue to push for.

My second goal is for international readers such as myself - acknowledge the importance of reading books by women writers in our own non-English languages! Every year, readers from around the world will ask me if WITMonth is only for English-language readers. I always find myself struggling to explain that no, it's not, but also, no, translations of extremely popular American women writers into different languages is not what I mean when I talk about women in translation. While I'm not sure how much reading I'll get done this year, I do hope to be able to reach out to more readers/translators to begin a wider effort to promote those works by women writers that have not yet been translated.

And with that... August has just begun, sleepily and calmly. WITMonth is on its way and there is so much to look forward to this month. Let's go!