WITMonth Day 26 | The 100 Best WIT, one year later

On this day last year, I published the final list of the 100 Best WIT.

The idea behind the 100 Best WIT started, originally, as a response to the erasure of women writers in translation from the book The 100 Best Novels in Translation. While I would personally never claim to having enough experience, expertise, or understanding to write my own definitive top-100 list, I thought that a crowd-sourced list would be a great way to see what readers around the world feel are the worthiest books. As I wrote last year, it was never going to be the 100 "best" books, but the 100 most "popular", and even that assessment was heavily skewed by my audience and the folks who even engaged with the project.

There are a lot of things I would do differently today, if I were to repeat the project. To begin with, I would try to reach a much wider audience - the couple hundred or so readers who participated are without a doubt a remarkably diverse and widely-read bunch, but the overwhelming majority came from within the same online translated literature community. This, I think, contributed in part to the heavy contemporary tilt of the final list, since these were the books that were fresh in readers' minds, and many reflected recent literary trends within this particular community. 

I would want to better define the scope of the project and separate between translated-into-English versus untranslated works. Ultimately, while many readers did submit works that have not yet been translated into English, there was no real way these had a fighting chance to make it to the final list, given that the overwhelming majority of submissions were through the English-language lens. I would love to compile a truly international list that includes works that have never been translated into any other language (but deserve to!), but that would look very, very different and would require a completely different perspective. Maybe someday.

And ultimately I would probably want to have a stronger editorial influence. The biases that are entrenched in this complicated world of literary translations mean that the list itself reflects some of those biases, most notably a strong European slant. As difficult as it would be to crowd-source a list while also giving myself (or some sort of editorial team) unique powers, I think there is something to be said about limiting books from similar backgrounds or from the same authors. In terms of nominations, some authors had almost all of their books individually nominated in such a way that I feel shut out many other writers. 

Similarly, had the tallies been public, would readers have nominated the same books? On multiple occasions, readers told me that they wanted to nominate book "X", but decided that it must be in the top spot so instead they nominated "Y", and book "X" was nowhere on the list. Would people have chosen differently if they knew which books were leading? Which books had already been nominated? Which authors were already guaranteed a slot (or two) and didn't need more votes for their third-fourth-whatever book?

I'm still so extraordinarily proud of what we did with the 100 Best WIT. I think it's a list quite unlike any other out there in the world, and as I wrote earlier this month, I think there's what to learn from it in terms of how to build a future canon. And as a reading list, I've found it to be interesting and diverse (even with its flaws). One year later, I am happy to keep revisiting the list and think about what it meant... and what we can continue to learn from it for the future. Should we start planning a more streamlined version for WITMonth 2021...?

WITMonth Day 10 | What the 100 Best WIT can teach us about shaping a future canon

Last year's big WITMonth project was the 100 Best WIT. Together, readers from around the world sent in their favorite books by women writers in translation and we built what I had hoped would be a new canon of sorts. The ultimate product is one I am both enormously proud of and somewhat disappointed by, as I've previously detailed. As wonderful a list as it is (and it really is wonderful!), the 100 Best WIT remains dominantly European in a way that emphasizes how limited the scope of literature by women writers in translation remains.

Yet despite this disappointment, I find myself wondering if there aren't lessons to be learned about forming a new canon even from this imperfect list. In a video that I posted a few days before the end of the submission period last year, I mentioned how very contemporary the list was; I mentioned this again when revealing the final list itself as well. A contemporary list may strike most readers as the opposite of canon - these works have yet to prove themselves! - though in my view this is precisely what makes the 100 Best WIT such a fascinating contra to standard lists. The canon is no less a selection of popular titles than any modern list, the only exception being that someone has decreed that these particular books have value, and that status is then perpetuated over time.

There is no question in my mind that the canon needs a full overhaul and reshaping. It's not enough to say that the canon includes outdated, racist, sexist, or even just bad books, we have to acknowledge the mistakes that go into crafting canons. It's not for nothing that the 100 Best WIT was partly born in response to Boyd Tonkin's* starkly imbalanced The 100 Best Novels in Translation. Tonkin made many choices - intentional or not - that took an existing problem in terms of women's representation in translation (to English) and exacerbated it, whether in beginning his canon in the 17th century (rather than the 11th, which marks the actual dawn of the novel era, as set by Murasaki Shikibu herself) or in de-emphasizing works written in the 20th century. I wrote about this in that original post, arguing that exclusion is a choice, particularly when determining a new canon.

A future canon would have to take a lot of different questions into account. Eternal fame, we're now reminded, is hardly the marker of true literary quality and often fails to take into account external factors regarding an author's personal behavior or at-times abhorrent views, which themselves necessitate reevaluation of the texts. Popularity is not fixed and often depends on so many other cultural and social factors. We should ask ourselves why a canon may look thin or limited in some ways - are we overemphasizing certain voices/perspectives at the expense of others? We would need to interrogate our own literary exposure and education - how do we rank a book that is clearly part of the canon in one country but an under-the-radar sales bust in another? 

The 100 Best WIT doesn't answer these questions as much as remind us of them. Even with its European bias, our list still fails to include literary giants like Selma Lagerlöf, George Sand, Christine de Pizan, Madame de La Fayette, Isabelle de Charrière, or Anna Akhmatova. Not to mention Sei Shōnagon or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and if we start to expand our 20th century greats: Rosario Castellanos, Gabriela Mistral, Mahasweta Devi, Qurratulain Hyder, Maryse Condé, Can Xue... This is not to suggest that women writers in translation from the 21st century are not to be valued (quite the contrary!), but it's still an important reminder of how little space we're leaving these writers in our larger literary landscape. We give temporary - contemporary - space to new writers, without filling in the gaps of the past. And those writers absolutely exist and many of them are worthy of so much more attention and respect. The writers I just listed are only among those I've personally read (or am currently reading, in the case of Hyder). There are dozens, hundreds, likely thousands more women writers from around the world who simply need that space reallocated. Isn't that what the canon is supposed to do?

It's not just lessons from the mistakes, there are also lessons from the best parts of the 100 Best WIT. Despite its geographic limitations, the 100 Best WIT does make space for a lot of women writers from different backgrounds than those usually found in "Best of" lists. In addition to more than a tenth of the list coming from Japanese women writers alone, there are also several queer classics/modern classics, books from a wide range of genres, and multiple books that tackle huge political issues (whether as nonfiction or through fictional means). It can't be described as a homogeneous list by any stretch of the imagination, whether stylistically, in terms of genre, or writer background (even with the Eurocentrism - Europe is not homogeneous either!).

These are things we need to remember for the future. These are things we need to remember for any future canon we may build, WIT-specific or not. We may argue that the canon is dead, but that doesn't mean much for the concept of the canon or canonization as a literary process - those will exist no matter how many old, outdated, sexist, and racist lists we throw away. So one year after the 100 Best WIT, let's take a moment to appreciate the revolutionary nature of creating a new canon (including the flaws and failures in the system that highlight existing biases!) and what it means for the future.

And yes, let's remember some of these books for that future canon as well, shall we?

* It should be noted that Tonkin himself is someone who does support the women in translation movement through serving as a judge for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, even if I do not personally accept his arguments as to why 14/100 WIT is reasonable representation

The European problem | 100 Best WIT

When deciding to craft a "new canon" and creating the list of "100 Best Women in Translation", my initial hope was truly to reshape our existing impressions of literature. How tiring to read the same sorts of "Best of" lists, time and again. Whether it's things like the top books of the year as published by the NYT or "official" canons promoted by various literary organizations or special "classics" series by different well-regarded publishers, the limited mindset of these lists honestly exhausted me at some point. And of course, this extends beyond just literature. Is Hollywood truly the creator of all good films in the world? Does the only quality television emerge from the US or UK? Etc etc.

I always knew that crowdsourcing a list of 100 books by women in translation would be imperfect. I knew that it would not truly be the 100 "best", but the 100 "most popular", and as such would be tilted by all sorts of factors. Changes in the list's winning titles during its nominations period showcased some of these flaws, with the earliest batch of nominations coming from die-hard fans of literature in translation (and a lot of translators!) and reflecting fairly obscure titles, while many of the more "popular" titles fell on the wayside until much later in the nominations process. People also frequently referenced their assumptions about biases when nominating their favorite choices, which led to truly bizarre omissions or results, simply because several readers said things like "well, I bet everyone has nominated [book], so I'll go for [other books] instead" and nobody ended up actually nominating that book until very late in the game! (True story.)

I might discuss some of those biases someday, but the truly biggest and most apparent bias is one that I realized right away was going to happen, and the one that disappointed me most by the end of the nominations process - the 100 Best WIT is a highly Eurocentric list.

Let's be clear: Literature translated into English on the whole is overwhelming Eurocentric. European titles accounted for 64% of new fiction and poetry translations into English from the years 2013 through 2017, based on the Three Percent Database. There are few differences between the global rates and those for women in translation specifically. When breaking it down into smaller (approximate) regional definitions (recognizing that there are cultural biases within European translations as well), it's clear that translations into English have a "close-to-home" bias - 27% come from Western Europe, 15% from Central Europe, and 12% from Nordic countries. Only 7% and 2% of translated literature comes from Eastern or Southeastern European countries.

This, as you might imagine, has little correlation with actual population distributions across the world. Asia - both the world's largest and most populous continent - provided only 18% of translations into English in that 2013-2017 timeframe. Think about it. China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines... countries with literally hundreds of millions and billions of people, the vast majority of whom read and write in languages other than English, are represented by a handful of titles for all. South Korea and Japan are slightly better represented, but we're still talking about significantly fewer titles per capita as compared with France, for instance (South Korea has 68 translations for a country of 51.7 million people, while France has 372 for a country of approximately 67 million). Translations are biased in a lot of ways, and country of origin is absolutely one of them. And all of this without taking into account the truly abysmal representation for African literature in translation.

Breakdown of country of origin for new fiction/poetry translations into English published between 2013 and 2017 (data from the Three Percent database)

So let's go back to the 100 Best WIT. I expressed my disappointment at how Eurocentric the list is, due to the fact that 56 of the top 100 were of European origin. It can be argued that this is actually a somewhat positive value - after all, it's a bit less than the industry-wide 64%. And not all of the European writers are necessarily white European writers, introducing an additional degree of diversity for which country alone does not account. And yet wonderful as it is to have a list of the 100 Best WIT, it frustrates me to see the continued hurdles women writers from around the world face. Why doesn't our list have more African women writers? More Indian women writers? More Arab women writers? More Southeast Asian writers? Why do we tear down certain barriers, only to reveal additional ones?

There is an answer to these question, and the answer lies in that chart above. The fact is that translations are not made equal. The translated literary landscape remains thoroughly rooted in European stories, whether classic or modern. The 100 Best WIT list is tilted extraordinarily modern (note how many classic [European] women in translation didn't make it!), yet it still cannot overcome the simple availability bias. How can we expect English-language readers to nominate books they haven't read? (And while I wanted the 100 Best WIT to truly be international and not just about translations into English, there too lies a bias - the list was largely compiled by English-language readers, and of those overwhelmingly American or British readers.) So it really boils down to... how can we expect readers to love books they haven't read?

Allow me to emphasize this last point: Readers cannot be expected to love books they haven't read.

This leads back to that original WIT question in the first place. After all, the reason I care about WIT is because I care about actually getting a chance to read books from all the world, by all sorts of writers. Women writers obviously exist and always have, but their availability has been limited as compared to men writers in translation. The struggle has been to carve out that cultural space for their existing works, while also making sure we give room to more works overall. Giving space to more European women writers can be a step forward in very, very specific contexts - for European-focused publishers, when talking about European classics, when looking at very specific cultures or cultural expectations - but it really isn't when looking at the big picture. This project has always been about recognizing a cultural bias and seeking to rectify it. Replacing one bias with another is not where I want the Women in Translation movement to be.

I won't pretend I'm surprised that the 100 Best WIT list is Eurocentric. I won't pretend that I'm not still proud of the work that we did. I also won't pretend that I don't desperately want to revisit this project someday in the future, and create a wider, more inclusive version of the 100 Best WIT once we've worked on improving the publishing stats. (But, like, someday far in the future, because this was actually a bit exhausting in how much work it ended up being...)

Things are changing. We're slowly seeing a greater awareness for the lack of diversity in the translated literature world. Of the publishing world overall. The numbers for women in translation are slowly going up, though they are somewhat hampered by wide gaps in nonfiction and among certain publishers. Outside of the world of literature in translation, we're also seeing more and more readers becoming aware of cultural biases against writers from around the world (or even just different backgrounds within certain cultural contexts, e.g. "We Need Diverse Books" or the recent discussion of Latinx writers in the publishing industry). And while women - particularly women of marginalized backgrounds - face almost insurmountable hurdles in advancements across a lot of fields (politics is sharply on my mind today, but science, as ever, remains my home territory and most frustrating lived experience), there are pockets of improvement and good around the world.

The 100 Best WIT is a pocket of good when looked at from one angle, in the fact that thousands of readers have now read the list and begun to engage with the women in translation project for the first time. As I already said, I remain extraordinarily proud of the work we (and I) did. Of what we created. It remains unique and revolutionary in a lot of ways. But the list also reflects the gulfs we have yet to cross. It's something that will absolutely be shaping my own reading in the coming months and years; again, I will not eliminate one bias just to introduce another. May this be a lesson for us all, and an opportunity to begin to create that next canon with a better understanding of the next battles.

The 100 Best Women in Translation - The rest?

It's been several months since I posted the top 100 nominated titles from the 100 Best Women in Translation list. At the time, I promised to quickly released the full list, once I'd clean it up and sort through it to make sure I didn't have any errors or redundancies. Unfortunately, life caught up with me. WITMonth this year proved significantly more difficult for me than I'd anticipated, and by the time I was feeling somewhat recovered from the stress and burnout from compiling the list in the first place, I found myself in the midst of one of the more difficult periods of my life due to some health matters. As I'm finally emerging back to life, I realize that I'm not going to find the energy and motivation the fully organize the almost-800-title list (in which there are probably errors and redundancies), and will instead simply... upload it as is. This is the list as I compiled it, not as I ultimately tallied. It's entirely possible that I mess things I'm - I'm just a person! - but that's how the world goes. Besides, what popularity contest doesn't have some sort of error in it, hmmm?

Anyways, enjoy!

The complete, raw, unedited 100 Best WIT nominations list

WITMonth Day 26 | The 100 Best Books by Women Writers in Translation

For the past almost-two months, readers from around the world have been sending in their nominations and votes for this list: The 100 Best Books by Women in Translation. Inspired in part by Catherine Taylor's excellent review of Boyd Tonkin's 100 Best Novels in Translation, fellow bloggers (including Twitter user Antonomasia), and subsequent conversations on this blog, the idea was to create a new canon of sorts. Every reader could send up to 10 nominations of books written by women, trans, or nonbinary authors, originally written in any language other than English. Ultimately, almost 800 unique books were nominated. Most of the titles only ever had a single vote, but it speaks to the passion and love that readers have for women writers from around the world that we reached such a number. Many people sought to promote books that they felt didn't get enough attention, or books that they hoped might someday be translated, regardless whether they expected that book to make it to the top 100. The whole list - and specifically the one comprised of untranslated-into-English books - is also a worthy one, but I'll talk about it at a later time.

Let's focus on the top 100.

First and foremost, a disclaimer: This is obviously not really a list of the 100 best books by women in translation... because no such list could ever possibly exist! Every canon will be flawed in some form or other, as I'll be discussing more over the next few days and weeks. Our list is crowdsourced and borne of reader-love; it is a list that is strongly rooted in current reading trends (even if you might be surprised by some inclusions/omissions... I certainly was!). There's a lot of ink to be spilled over just about every title that ended up making it into the top 100 and much more over those that didn't make it, but here's the bottom line: Whether or not these are truly the 100 best books by women writers from around the world, whether or not this is a flawlessly representative list, and whether or not we'd get the same list if we tried again next week (I am confident we would not), this is a list of 100 books by women writers from around the world that people loved. That's worthy in and of itself.

But enough of my thoughts! I'll have plenty of time to talk about things I find interesting, surprising, or disappointing about this list at a later time (and I assure you, I will). Instead, I now present to you...

The 100 Best Books by Women Writers in Translation

Title	Author	Translator(s) into English	Language	Country	Vote tally	Original publication
My Brilliant Friend	Elena Ferrante	Ann Goldstein	Italian	Italy	26	2011
The Vegetarian	Han Kang	Deborah Smith	Korean	South Korea	24	2007
Fever Dream	Samanta Schweblin	Megan McDowell	Spanish	Argentina	22	2014
Human Acts	Han Kang	Deborah Smith	Korean	South Korea	19	2014
The Door	Magda Szabó	Len Rix	Hungarian	Hungary	19	1987
Flights	Olga Tokarczuk	Jennifer Croft	Polish	Poland	19	2007
Convenience Store Woman	Sayaka Murata	Ginny Tapley Takemori	Japanese	Japan	19	2016
The Summer Book	Tove Jansson	Thomas Teal	Swedish	Finland	17	1972
The Housekeeper and the Professor	Yoko Ogawa	Stephen Snyder	Japanese	Japan	13	2003
The Years	Annie Ernaux	Alison L. Strayer	French	France	12	2008
Things We Lost in the Fire	Mariana Enríquez	Megan McDowell	Spanish	Argentina	12	2016
Death in Spring	Mercè Rodoreda	Martha Tennant	Catalan	Spain	12	1986
Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead	Olga Tokarczuk	Antonia Lloyd-Jones	Polish	Poland	12	2009
Sphinx	Anne Garréta	Emma Ramadan	French	France	11	1986
Die, My Love	Ariana Harwicz	Sarah Moss, Carolina Orloff	Spanish	Argentina	11	2012
Kitchen	Banana Yoshimoto	Megan Backus	Japanese	Japan	11	1987
Persepolis	Marjane Satrapi	Mattias Ripa, Blake Ferris, Anjali Singh	French	Iran / France	11	2000
Disoriental	Négar Djavadi	Tina Kover	French	Iran / France	11	2016
The Mussel Feast	Birgit Vanderbeke	Jamie Bulloch	German	Germany	10	1990
The Notebook Trilogy	Ágota Kristóf	Alan Sheridan	French	Hungary	9	1991
Innocence	Heda Margolius Kovály	Alex Zucker	Czech	Czech Republic	9	1985
The House of the Spirits	Isabel Allende	Magda Bogin	Spanish	Chile	9	1982
The End of Days	Jenny Erpenbeck	Susan Bernofsky	German	Germany	9	2013
A True Novel	Minae Mizumura	Juliet Winters Carpenter	Japanese	Japan	9	2002
The Unwomanly Face of War	Svetlana Alexievich	Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky	Russian	Belarus	9	1985
Eve Out of Her Ruins	Ananda Devi	Jeffrey Zuckerman	French	Mauritius	8	2006
Trieste	Daša Drndić	Ellen Elias-Bursać	Croatian	Croatia	8	2007
Bonjour Tristesse	Françoise Sagan	Irene Ash	French	France	8	1954
Love	Hanne Ørstavik	Martin Aitken	Norwegian	Norway	8	1997
Suite Française	Irène Némirovsky	Sandra Smith	French	France	8	1942
So Long a Letter	Mariama Bâ	Modupe Bode-Thomas	French	Senegal	8	1979
The Tale of Genji	Murasaki Shikibu	Various	Japanese	Japan	8	1008
The Elegance of the Hedgehog	Muriel Barbery	Alison Anderson	French	France	8	2006
Tentacle	Rita Indiana	Achy Obejas	Spanish	Dominican Republic	8	2015
Kristin Lavransdatter	Sigrid Undset	Various	Norwegian	Norway	8	1922
Second Hand Time	Svetlana Alexievich	Bela Shayevich	Russian	Belarus	8	2013
Territory of Light	Yūko Tsushima	Geraldine Harcourt	Japanese	Japan	8	1979
The Hour of the Star	Clarice Lispector	Benjamin Moser	Portuguese	Brazil	7	1977
Woman at Point Zero	Nawal El Saadawi	Sherif Hetata	Arabic	Egypt	7	1975
Soviet Milk	Nora Ikstena	Margita Gailitis	Latvian	Latvia	7	2015
Notes of a Crocodile	Qiu Miaojin	Bonnie Huie	Chinese	Taiwan	7	1994
La Bastarda	Trifonia Melibea Obono	Lawrence Schimel	Spanish	Equatorial Guinea	7	2016
Vernon Subutex I	Virginie Despentes	Frank Wynne	French	France	7	2015
Revenge	Yoko Ogawa	Stephen Snyder	Japanese	Japan	7	1998
Memoirs of a Polar Bear	Yoko Tawada	Susan Bernofsky	German	Germany	7	2014
Nada	Carmen Laforet	Edith Grossman	Spanish	Spain	6	1945
Near to the Wild Heart	Clarice Lispector	Alison Entrekin	Portuguese	Brazil	6	1943
Strange Weather in Tokyo / The Briefcase	Hiromi Kawakami	Allison Markin Powell	Japanese	Japan	6	2001
Go, Went, Gone	Jenny Erpenbeck	Susan Bernofsky	German	Germany	6	2015
Seeing Red	Lina Meruane	Megan McDowell	Spanish	Chile	6	2012
Fish Soup	Margarita García Robayo	Charlotte Coombe	Spanish	Colombia	6	2018
The Lover	Marguerite Duras	Barbara Bray	French	France	6	1984
Memoirs of Hadrian	Marguerite Yourcenar	Grace Frick	French	France	6	1951
The Wall	Marlen Haushofer	Shaun Whiteside	German	Austria	6	1963
Family Lexicon	Natalia Ginzburg	Various	Italian	Italy	6	1963
People in the Room	Norah Lange	Charlotte Whittle	Spanish	Argentina	6	1950
Mouthful of Birds	Samanta Schweblin	Megan McDowell	Spanish	Argentina	6	2008
Poems	Sappho	Various	Ancient Greek	Greece	6	-570
The Faculty of Dreams	Sara Stridsberg	Deborah Bragan-Turner	Swedish	Sweden	6	2006
Thus Were Their Faces	Silvina Ocampo	Daniel Balderston	Spanish	Argentina	6	1993
The Second Sex	Simone de Beauvoir	Various	French	France	6	1949
The True Deceiver	Tove Jansson	Thomas Teal	Swedish	Finland	6	1982
Faces in the Crowd	Valeria Luiselli	Christina McSweeney	Spanish	Mexico	6	2011
A View with a Grain of Sand	Wisława Szymborska	Stanislaw Baranczak, Clare Cavanagh	Polish	Poland	6	1995
The Queue	Basma Abdel Aziz	Elisabeth Jaquette	Arabic	Egypt	5	2016
Fox	Dubravka Ugrešić	Ellen Elias-Bursać	Croatian	Croatia	5	2017
The Days of Abandonment	Elena Ferrante	Ann Goldstein	Italian	Italy	5	2002
History	Elsa Morante	William Weaver	Italian	Italy	5	1974
Arturo's Island	Elsa Morante	Various	Italian	Italy	5	1957
Confessions	Kanae Minato	Stephen Snyder	Japanese	Japan	5	2008
The Ten Thousand Things	Maria Dermoût	Hans Koning	Dutch	Indonesia / Netherlands	5	1955
My Heart Hemmed In	Marie NDiaye	Jordan Stump	French	France	5	2007
The Unit	Ninni Holmqvist	Marlaine Delargy	Swedish	Sweden	5	2006
The Bridge of Beyond	Simone Schwarz-Bart	Barbara Bray	French	Guadeloupe	5	1972
Purge	Sofi Oksanen	Lola Rogers	Finnish	Finland	5	2008
The Story of My Teeth	Valeria Luiselli	Christina MacSweeney	Spanish	Mexico	5	2013
Swallowing Mercury	Wioletta Greg	Eliza Marciniak	Polish	Poland	5	2014
Tokyo Ueno Station	Yu Miri	Morgan Giles	Japanese	Japan	5	2014
The Little Girl on the Ice Floe	Adélaïde Bon	Various	French	France	4	2018
Extracting the Stone of Madness	Alejandra Pizarnik	Yvette Siegert	Spanish	Argentina	4	1972
The Remainder	Alia Trabucco Zerán	Sophie Hughes	Spanish	Chile	4	2015
The Seventh Cross	Anna Seghers	Margo Bettauer Dembo	German	Germany	4	1942
The Naked Woman	Armonía Somers	Kit Maude	Spanish	Uruguay	4	1950
Waking Lions	Ayelet Gundar-Goshen	Sondra Silverston	Hebrew	Israel	4	2012
The Quest for Christa T.	Christa Wolf	Christopher Middleton	German	Germany	4	1968
A Winter's Promise	Christelle Dabos	Hildegarde Serle	French	France	4	2013
Mirror Shoulder Signal	Dorthe Nors	Misha Hoekstra	Danish	Denmark	4	2015
Sweet Days of Discipline	Fleur Jaeggy	Tim Parks	Italian	Switzerland	4	1989
Zuleikha	Guzel Yakhina	Lisa Hayden	Russian	Russia	4	2015
The Hunger Angel	Herta Müller	Philip Boehm	German	Romania / Germany	4	2009
Please Look After Mom	Kyung-sook Shin	Chi Young	Korean	South Korean	4	2008
Like Water for Chocolate	Laura Esquivel	Thomas Christensen, Carol Christensen	Spanish	Mexico	4	1989
La Femme de Gilles	Madeleine Bourdouxhe	Faith Evans	French	Belgium	4	1937
The History of Bees	Maja Lunde	Diane Oatley	Norwegian	Norway	4	2015
The Weight of Things	Marianne Fritz	Adrian Nathan West	German	Austria	4	1979
Translation as Transhumance	Mireille Gansel	Ros Schwartz	French	France	4	2014
Out	Natsuo Kirino	Stephen Snyder	Japanese	Japan	4	1997
Our Lady of the Nile	Scholastique Mukasonga	Melanie L. Mauthner	French	Rwanda / France	4	2012
Subtly Worded	Teffi	Anne Marie Jackson, Robert Chandler	Russian	Russia	4	1990
The Letter for the King	Tonke Dragt	Laura Watkinson	Dutch	The Netherlands	4	1962

WITMonth Day 22 | A vlog about the #100BestWIT!

A vlog! They happen, on occasion.

In which I ramble about the 100 Best Books by Women in Translation and some plans for the future list!

WITMonth Day 16 | #100BestWIT deadline approaching!

This is just a reminder that the #100BestWIT submission deadline - AUGUST 25TH - is fast approaching! Don't forget to send in up to 10 nominations of books by women writers from around the world (writing in any language other than English, whether or not it's been translated into other languages). Send your nominations via Twitter (@read_WIT), Instagram (@readwit), comment here, or email (biblibio [at] gmail)! As of right now, there are almost 1000 individual votes, but we can definitely get more and have a more decisive canon. So spread the word - on social media, among your friends, online and offline - and send your nominations in!

WITMonth Day 10 | Creating a new canon

The literary canon is dying.

It's hard not to feel that there is no longer reason to have a fixed literary canon. In an era in which readers may freely find books that suit their tastes, are exposed to a far wider range of books than ever before, and have endless "best of" lists every year in just about every genre imaginable from which to choose their next read, the idea of a single canon seems almost... quaint. What does the canon give us? Why do we even need it?

Yet of course, the canon remains the foundation of our literary approach. Like it or not (and I feel that most readers today fall into the latter category, for a variety of reasons), canons provide a framework for how we approach and discuss literature in a shared way. No, we don't necessarily agree that Catcher in the Rye is a good book, but the vast majority of US-based readers have read the book for school and can frame an argument around it. The canon defines experiences we deem to be universal, important, or indeed essential. By virtue of including a book in the canon, we also immortalize it in a particularly unique way.

The problem is that the canon in its current shape is flawed to a shocking degree. If we look at "100 Best..." lists from even just the past decade, we find gaping holes and shocking omissions. I don't even mean this on a personal taste level, I mean... entire continents are often missing. Women are grossly underrepresented. The canon is inevitably heavily tilted toward the language in which it's presented and blatantly Anglo/Euro-centric even when it claims to be international. It is depressingly white. And straight. And... and... and...

This even extends to lists that claim to break free of the canon's constraints. You'll recall my criticism of Boyd Tonkin's 100 Best Novels in Translation, where my ultimate conclusion was that "exclusion is a choice". As I wrote at the time, "But when crafting a new canon, isn't the whole point to be introducing and promoting new and diverse works? If in creating a new list of titles in translation, you fail to give space to exactly the writers that would be surprising and exciting for a diverse readership, what exactly are you achieving?" It was in that post that I first mused aloud over the idea that would eventually develop to become the 100 Best Books by Women in Translation. It was in response that particular canon, and that particular imbalance.

The literary canon is dead.

The 100 Best WIT (to use the shortened name) is not going to be a perfect encapsulation of all literature by women in translation. Though I'm hesitant to reveal too much before the final, dramatic release, I feel comfortable in pointing out that the current list as it stands is strongly tilted toward contemporary titles... and indeed titles published within the last year or two. It is obvious that availability and accessibility are often guiding readers in their picks - after all, how can readers vote on books that they've never been exposed to? A crowd-sourced list will inevitably be more of a popularity contest than anything else. Which is... honestly okay. The official canon itself has long been a popularity contest of sorts, except the books included are those that remain popular years after their publication. And when you're talking about a group that has been so marginalized for so long, it is unsurprising that the list ends up being tilted more modern/contemporary since only in recent years has awareness spread enough for readers to become exposed to more books by women in translation.

But here's what else I can say about this new list: It spans the world in a way that, to the best of my knowledge, few other lists ever has. The top two titles on the list so far (and competition is close, so this may yet change!) are books by non-European women writers. Many books are by queer writers and about queer characters. There are books from almost every continent on Earth (Oceania is, I believe, currently the only human-populated region with no representation). There's sci-fi, nonfiction, children's literature, picture books, YA, mysteries, and more. Some of the books have been massive bestsellers, some have flown under the radar. Some are books that have only recently been published in their original languages, some are ancient classics that transcend literary definition.

This is what I want the new canon to look like. Because whatever flaws the final list will have (and I'm certain every reader will find something to critique, because there's no way to create a "Best of" list that doesn't anger basically everyone!), it does, at the very least, showcase the world in a way that the "official" literary canon never has. This list too will not encompass everything - there are countless English-language writers who doubtlessly deserve a spot in a full-scale canon, and I suppose* some men writers have also proven themselves adequate enough. This new canon is simply an alternative - what happens if we assume for a moment that the default is something else? What happens if we throw away our notions of what defines the "literary canon" and start over, with clear eyes and a fresh mind?

The literary canon is dead. Long live the literary canon!


* This is a (hopefully obvious) joke

WITMonth Day 1 | Year six!!!

It's the first of August and that means... WITMonth! WITMonth has arrived!

Every year brings with it something new and miraculous and 2019 will be no different. This year sees new readers joining the party on a multitude of different platforms: We've got friends on Twitter (*waves*), Instagram, Youtube, hopefully some discussions on Goodreads, Facebook, and more. And it's not just the internet, either. As there have been in the past few years, there are plenty of lovely bookstore or library displays going up in various countries around the world. Many magazines are featuring women writers in translation this month (sidebar: if you can read Hebrew, feel free to check out this interview with me!) and also discussing the matter. Publishers have discounts and giveaways on their websites and social media. Translators are promoting their works, readers are sharing their TBRs, and the #WITMonth tag is getting busy.

But wait, there's more!

This year, I'm organizing the "100 Best Women in Translation". The project (as mentioned in my last post) seeks to create a new canon. Rather than sticking with the tired, repetitive, and frankly not-that-great canon of straight, white, Anglo men, this is our chance - and I use the term "our" very deliberately! - to craft something a little different. Of course this list cannot be a definitive women-in-translation canon, but it can come close! Readers have been sharing their top 10 picks for the past month. The list is now just over 500 titles long, with almost 900 votes. Readers are encouraged to vote for their top 10 and share with as many other readers as possible, so that we get the most inclusive list possible! More than that, the list also eschews the "in translation" part of our challenge, but not the internationalism; any book written by a woman (or trans or nonbinary or intersex) writer in a language other than English (whether or not it has been translated into English or other languages!) is eligible. The final 100-strong list will be published shortly after the August 25th deadline, but all nominated titles will eventually be published as well, and I'll be discussing some aspects of the project throughout the month. (But no spoilers! The idea is for readers to come up with their favorites, with as little bias as possible.) See the official details below, or this video.

There's also the annual new releases database, which can be a useful resource for anyone looking for new books to read this month or throughout the year. Last year's list can be found here. I'll also be posting all sorts of recommendation lists and so on throughout the month, so keep an eye out, but in the meantime you can check out the various genre-specific lists I prepared last year.

This year will also seem some new projects. Rather than the standard statistics as published in years past, I've been working on compiling data from a wider range of publishers this year including all works in translation, regardless genre. As you all probably know, I respect the Three Percent database like nothing else (formerly here, now here), but its focus on first-time translations and fiction/poetry only does limit the degree to which we can fully assess the status of women in translation in English. This year's data will hopefully clarify some of the longstanding questions about how prevalent the women in translation problem really is.

I'm also expanding the statistics to something very new and different. Later this month, I hope to publish the first Hebrew-language author gender breakdown. While this analysis is also limited in as much as it covers only one language/country (and select publishers within it), I've found some pretty interesting things in the data and am looking forward to sharing it with you all.

I've got a few more ideas for WITMonth, but I'll hold off on them for now... don't want to ruin all the surprises. For now... sit back, relax, and... WITMonth!