WITMonth Day 22 | Mirrors, windows, and doors

I'm not sure when I first learned about the concept of mirrors versus windows in literature or from who, but it's somehow become central to my reading in recent years. At its core, "mirrors versus windows" suggests that there are two types of stories, culturally: Mirrors reflect your experiences and provide insight through resemblance to something familiar to you, while windows provide insight into other experiences and cultures which are different from your own.

I've thought about this dichotomy a lot recently. What is the women in translation project, after all, if not a persistent plea for more windows into new worlds? Yet at the same time, isn't part of my argument that any window will inevitably also reflect aspects of your experiences? Glass is maybe not the best mirror, but it can definitely serve as one. And what about stories that aren't designed for certain readers? What about stories that demand work in crossing a clear cultural threshold?

I've spent much of this past month dancing around this question from multiple angles, if not expressly. My initial goal for WITMonth this year was to broaden my own reading to countries, continents, and cultures with which I was less familiar, and I have thus far found myself exposed to so many different worlds and experiences than I was expecting. Some experiences have been wholly positive, but I inevitably also often find myself confused or ambivalent about certain books. Take my main criticism of Ambai's A Kitchen in the Corner of the House, that the book does not provide enough context for an uneducated English-language audience - am I not simply complaining that I don't know enough about Tamil/Indian culture to be able to appreciate the book? Am I not revealing my own shortcomings, rather than that of the book itself? Does my appreciation of the breadth of history Chantal T. Spitz introduces in Island of Shattered Dreams not give too much weight to her work by virtue of it attempting to tell Tahiti's story to a foreign audience? Does this make me a literary tourist? Are these bad things?

I increasingly find myself thinking in terms of three categories of cultural reading, rather than two: Mirrors, windows, and doors.

1. Mirrors: These can be direct or indirect. I might read a book that is directly reflective of experiences I have had and is utterly familiar, but I also might find mirrors in stories that are otherwise distant. A family epic, for instance, may have its own cultural touchstones, but little things that can bind together different cultures in a way that will make a totally "window"ed story feel familiar and reflective.
2. Windows: These are stories that provide a glimpse into another world, openly and intentionally. They acknowledge that they are distant and separated by a wall, while still playing out in full view of that distant reader. Windows can serve as introductions to new cultures and experiences, often in a clearly defined way.
3. Doors: A door is a fixed object. You typically cannot immediately see beyond it. But you can open it and cross a threshold into someone else's home and experience. The invitation for you to enter is there, but the story is still written to happen beyond four, closed walls, without necessarily assuming that you will enter entirely or that you will engage once inside. Doors give you insight into the world as someone else lives it, no changes made.

The women in translation project is always going to be about crossing cultures; works written in one language are always going to be different than what they may have been had they been written in another. To focus for a moment on the concept of translation at large, every single book we read in translation (from any language into any language, even including translations from English) is going to provide some bridge across different cultures, even if these are similar. And the things we write for one audience is never going to be the same as what we may write for another. As I wrote earlier in the month, different languages have different power and influence. Every work that crosses a border inherently has to address that cultural gap, whether expressly (windows) or in its distance (doors). 

The mirror/window/door theory is maybe only one fraction of literature (after all, not everything has to be about culture or personal experiences!), but when we talk so much about the unique value of women writers in translation, it feels like an important reminder. To take an example from one of the last books I read, I may not be half-Angolan half-Portuguese like Djamilia Pereira de Almeida's main character Mila or have the same relationship with my hair as that protagonist in That Hair (a book that I imagine will be much more of a mirror for Black women in culturally white countries, while for me it serves as a window), but I can see myself in her questions about identity across different borders and between different aspects of one's self. A book like A Kitchen in the Corner of the House may be a slightly confusing door for me, but it still leaves me with the option of exploring the "house" as a whole and learning more about Ambai and the culture from which she wrote. And Island of Shattered Dreams serves as a reminder that windows still come attached to houses with doors, making me want to "enter" and learn so much more about Tahitian culture. 

I am lucky to be able to access these stories and books. I am lucky to be able to learn as I do. Truthfully, I realized a long time ago that I will never be able to travel everywhere on Earth, nor speak to people from all sorts of different backgrounds. All I can do is try to listen where I can, which is a huge part of why I value literature in translation so much and literature by women writers in translation especially, particularly when the stories are doors more than they are windows (even if it's more difficult for me as a reader!). As my reading takes me ever further from my own culture and background, I am inevitably going to hit some walls in terms of what I know and understand. But isn't that the point of doors, to help me make it through? 

WITMonth Day 18 | New Daughters of Africa and WITMonth | Thoughts

I've been working my way through the absolutely phenomenal New Daughters of Africa for the past several months now. I'm 2/3 of the way through, reading in bursts and am repeatedly in awe of everything the book does. Truly. But I'm also frequently reminded of the one thing the book does fairly poorly: women in translation.

This brilliant, inclusive, expansive, international, and wholly diverse collection does so much so well, and yet women writers in translation are almost entirely invisible from the account. To the best of my assessment, there are exactly 7 women writers in translation featured in the collection (one of whom is credited with her co-author, but the translator is oddly ignored). By my count, there are an additional 4 writers who also write/publish in other languages with no translator credit for the included pieces. This is a grand total of 11 writers out of 211 authors (that I counted). In other words: 5%.

I don't want to fault Margaret Busby for mostly focusing on British authors or somehow fault English-language writers for getting a stage. Black women writers are sidelined enough without that and it is absolutely not my intention to suggest that the featured writers don't deserve their spotlight. Once again, I want to emphasize how astoundingly wonderful this collection is - after all, not everything has to be all WIT all the time for it to be of value, even during WITMonth! And there is such value in Busby's collection.

Orange flags represent the seven writers in translation, the blue flags the four additional women writers known to write in languages other than English.

And yet it's a perfect reflection of so much of what I've been talking about here lately. New Daughters of Africa is such a good collection of African and African-descended women writers from across the continent that its Anglo-centrism is baffling. The lack of Afro-Brazilian voices was something that struck me while reading, during one of the rare Afro-Caribbean stories. Afro-Latinx writers generally felt missing from the book in a very real way, not just as an abstract meta-assessment; I literally found myself flipping through to see if the writers happened to be clumped elsewhere in the book (alas, no). Perhaps it's explicitly because New Daughters of Africa does such a good job in offering so many different voices, stories, perspectives, and narratives that it becomes all the more obvious which are missing or underrepresented.

Then there's the last gap, which is almost invisible and which I'm somewhat hesitant to raise. Despite featuring many writers still working out of the African continent, there is not a single work or writer featured or mentioned as writing in a non-colonial language (and again, almost all are specifically English-language writers). Nothing from Igbo, Amharic, Malagasy, Swahili, honestly this list can go on and on with languages of varying literary traditions and scope, where none were even mentioned (to the best of my reading, at least). To reiterate what I wrote the other day: Authors are at liberty to write in whatever language they choose, but it does have an impact on the way stories are conveyed. And as readers, constantly being exposed to stories that have been written with a very specific frame or audience in mind also shapes our perceptions. Writing in other languages and translations have value for all sorts of reasons. For good and for bad, New Daughters of Africa highlights so much of what I've been writing about this past week: It's not only the power dynamics between different languages, but regional/cultural publishing disparities and even the tremendous difficulty in simply finding books by women writers in translation, when even a wonderful resource such as this can't quite bridge the gap. 

I'm loving New Daughters of Africa. I wholeheartedly recommend it to every single WITMonth reader who is looking for something vast and extraordinary to read, even if only 5% of the book is in translation. The book - like Indigenous Literatures of Micronesia - doesn't have to be a full work of/by women in translation in order to represent everything the project stands for. But I also think it's the perfect encapsulation of how women in translation is not a struggle that is separate from other literary movements or efforts. Black women writers in translation deserve more and while I would absolutely love to see a Daughters of Africa in Translation collection someday to balance this, I would have much rather just seen the original collection reflecting writing by all of Africa's daughters, not just those writing in English. 

WITMonth Day 6 | 50 women writers I've (almost) never read | Thoughts

It was not easy compiling this year's 50 Day Countdown. Last year, I set myself what seemed like an impossible challenge: I wanted to highlight 50 women writers in translation from 50 different countries, languages, ethnic backgrounds, or cultures. I further made a specific, concentrated effort to promote women writers from various non-European backgrounds, as my own little way of fighting back against Eurocentrism. I ended up managing to build that list, but it was hard, involving seemingly endless Wikipedia searches and digging within databases. I couldn't imagine doing something like that ever again.

So naturally, as WITMonth approached this year, I decided to set myself a similar-and-yet-totally-different challenge. After noticing last year how relatively easy it was to find women writers in translation from certain countries or cultures (e.g. Japan, Korea, China, Mexico, Argentina) versus others (basically the entirety of Africa), I knew I mostly wanted to focus on African, African-diaspora, and Caribbean women writers (as well as whatever South/Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern writers I happened upon). And after last year's struggle in finding well-publicized women writers from these countries (as well as other underrepresented regions), I knew that I didn't want to limit myself to books that had already been translated into English.

This means that the final list of 50 women writers from around the world is one that's largely comprised of authors unfamiliar to me. Many were originally written in French (a language I very much do not speak or know how to read, though I can muddle my way through a Wiki entry), a small percentage have been translated into English though I haven't read the books yet, and I've read full works by exactly two of the authors featured (one in the untranslated original and other in translation to English; since publishing the list and writing this post, I've also read another). I can't really call this a list of recommendations.

But it is a wishlist. It's a list of what I would like the literary landscape to look more like. Why shouldn't there be several Afro-Caribbean women writers in our public consciousness? Why shouldn't we revel in the African diaspora of Europe, or African writers from across the continent, some writing in colonial languages and some not? Why shouldn't we read Middle Eastern writers as a norm? Why shouldn't we be able to name-drop Burmese, Tahitian, Innu, Zoque, or Indonesian writers? Why shouldn't we be spoilt for choice with books by Indian writers across more than a dozen different languages?

Why shouldn't we truly have access to the world?

The 50 women writers featured in this year's WITMonth Countdown were almost all new to me. I spent hours tracking down their works, trying to find out whether they were still in print in translation (if indeed they'd ever been...), or to understand just how many prizes they'd won over their careers. Many have been featured in translation in poetry collections or magazines, but these are snippets, tiny samples of mountains of literature. As I already mentioned, many of these writers write in French, the most translated-from language into English. So why are so many of these writers in particular unavailable (or functionally unavailable) in translation?

I want to emphasize one of those points again: One of the things I looked for while compiling this list was award-winning writers. I actively sought writers who had been recognized for their works in some form (not simply through translation), often finding writers with decades of accolades and acclaim to their names who hadn't been translated into any language that I could track down. (I would often search for the author's name in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew language sites, as these are languages I can mostly navigate sites through.)

One of the longstanding "arguments" against the women in translation project is that of "quality", that there are both fewer women writers in languages other than English (often a false claim itself, though highly-language dependent...) and that they are often less acclaimed than men (often a false claim as well, and one that ignores the fact that just because bias exists across borders doesn't mean it should actively cross borders). The prevalence of award-winning writers refutes both claims, because even if we were to assume that those were valid arguments for bias in English (which I absolutely do not), it's obvious that many award-winning women writers are not translated. Are some award-winning men also not translated? Without a doubt, and many of the biases in place against women in translation from underrepresented backgrounds also exist against men in translation. This is important to remember.

My hope is that lists like this year's 50 Day Countdown become the norm in two ways. The first is in that wishlist of truly seeing the world in our literature in all its different shapes and perspectives. The second is that lists span languages and translation status as a means of promoting works for translation. A few readers have commented on this year's list with their own hope that it will somehow convince publishers that there's an interest in these specific books and that this list would be the catalyst to getting them translated. This is certainly my hope as well. As I said earlier, I can't vouch for the quality of almost all of the listed authors (even many of those who have been translated), but I can unequivocally state that I'm interested.

So let's go back to the beginning: This list was not merely "not easy" to compile, it was hard. It took effort and searching and confirming and mining and research. There are dozens more authors I ultimately excluded from the list for all sorts of reasons (lack of confirmed photo, recently passed away, not enough information about their books, texts in their native languages were also functionally unavailable...), but still - I was able to find these writers as nothing more than a book blogger hanging out on her couch on the weekend. (I'll be talking about this topic more in depth in the future...) Imagine if these were the norm, if our literary conversations could cross languages (and still include women writers!!). It's here, it's an option.

2020 #WITMonth 50 Day Countdown

Léonora Miano - Cameroon / France - French

Emmelie Prophète - Haiti - French

Bessora - Belgium / Switzerland - French

Thi Mar Win - Burma/Myanmar - Burmese

Maria Celestina Fernandes - Angola - Portuguese

Igiaba Scego - Italy / Somalia - Italian

Chantal Spitz - Tahiti / French Polynesia - French

Lucie Julia - Guadeloupe - Antillean Creole / French

Fadhila Bechar - Algeria - Tamazight/Berber

Ribka Sibhatu - Eritrea / Italy - Tigrinya / Italian

Irma Pineda - Mexico - Zapotec / Spanish

Conceição Lima - São Tomé Island - Portuguese

Béatrice Lalinon Gbado - Benin - French

Aminata Sow Fall - Senegal - French

Marie-Andrée Gill - Canada - French

Agnès Agboton - Benin / Catalonia - Spanish / Gun

Salma Khalil Alio - Chad - French

Monique Ilboudo - Burkina Faso - French

Shaïda Zarumey (Fatoumata Agnès Diaroumèye) - Niger - French

Shelly Engdau-Vanda - Ethiopia / Israel - Hebrew

Najlaa Osman Eltom - Sudan - Arabic

Samudra Neelima - India - Malayalam

Simone Atangana Bekono - Netherlands - Dutch

Koumanthio Zeinab Diallo - Guinea - French / Fula/Peul

Mikeas Sánchez - Mexico - Zoque / Spanish

Ngāreta Gabel - New Zealand - Māori

Germaine Kouméalo Anaté - Togo - French

Najwa Bin Shatwan - Libya - Arabic

Charline Effah - Gabon / France - French

Misrak Terefe - Ethiopia - Amharic

Michèle Rakotoson - Madagascar / France - French

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro - Puerto Rico - Spanish

Nadia Al-Kokabany - Yemen - Arabic

Hirondina Joshua - Mozambique - Portuguese

Amal Aden - Somalia / Norway - Norwegian

Marie-Célie Agnant - Haiti / Canada - French

Conceição Evaristo - Brazil - Portuguese

Karin Amatmoekrim - Suriname / Netherlands - Dutch

Aisha al-Saifi - Oman - Arabic

Nilam/Neelam Karki Niharika - Nepal - Nepali

Marie-Léontine Tsibinda - Republic of Congo - French

Najat El Hachmi - Morocco / Spain - Catalan

Coralie Frei - Comoros / Switzerland - French / German

Paramita Satpathy - India - Odia

Olinda Beja - São Tomé and Príncipe / Portugal - Portuguese

Véronique Tadjo - Côte d'Ivoire / France - French

Calixthe Beyala - Cameroon / France - French

Joséphine Bacon - Canada - Innu-aimun / French

Intan Paramaditha - Indonesia - Indonesian

Clémentine Nzuji - Democratic Republic of Congo - French

WITMonth Day 5 | A Rain of Words edited by Irène Assiba d'Almeida

I was surprised to realize I never reviewed this collection. I was certain - certain! - that I must have reviewed it last year. Did I simply discuss it? Did I mention it in so many other contexts that I forgot to discuss it here? Either way, A Rain of Words: A Bilingual Anthology of Women's Poetry in Francophone Africa (edited by Irène Assiba d'Almeida and translated by Janis A. Mayes) is a remarkable collection that deserves that much more attention and recognition.

I have often described my inability to review poetry books, and this feeling is exponentially higher when it comes to poetry anthologies. How can I really review a book that encompasses so much, that showcases so many voices, that alternates styles and perspectives and approaches? Some writers are given little more than a handful of lines to get their words across while others leap across multiple poems and pages. Some write succinctly, some write sprawlingly, some use intimate imagery, some use direct references, some bathe in lyricism, some laugh in modernisms, some are angry, some are happy, some are beautiful, some are not to my taste... The usual problems I have in addressing how poetry makes me feel are fully exacerbated by the nature of anthologies. So is this really a review? Who knows.

Suffice to say that I enjoyed A Rain of Words on just about every possible level. Did I love all of the poems? Of course not. I disliked some, was ambivalent about several, enjoyed many, and adored just a few. Each writer brings her own style and flair to this collection, making it less an individual song and more a cacophonous choir that doesn't always know what it's trying to do. Yes, there are moments when it sounds a little awful, but it's mostly glorious just to have the opportunity to experience it.

And in a WITMonth when I'm trying to focus on African women in translation in particular, it seems necessary to remind people that books like this exist. Some of the poems here address topics that can be viewed as uniquely "African", whether in addressing politics within their own or neighboring countries, or in raising specific cultural or religious touchstones. Some are from uniquely feminine perspectives, like poems that deal with motherhood or sexism. But many of the poems simply are, without adhering to any cultural assumptions or expectations, sometimes telling a specific story about a specific place and a specific experience and sometimes not. Poems about family, love, nature, peace, war, politics, life. Each one of these poems has value for the same reason that any poem does, and simply from the perspective of experiencing new poetry, I'm grateful to the CARAF Books series for putting out this collection. The collection sent me hunting for more works by these writers, and though I'm disappointed to see that too few of their full-length books have been translated into English, I am grateful for the exposure to those that have, whether poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. This book was indispensable for me while compiling this year's 50 Day Countdown (see tomorrow's post as well) and has been a great jumping off point in terms of finding other works.

For you, O poetry lover, I simply say this: In the same way that we seek out collections by writers from all sorts of different backgrounds, so do I recommend A Rain of Words. I think you'll enjoy it as I did.

WITMonth 2020 | Preparations and my reading plan

August approaches. Like in previous years, I am currently working on a "New Releases" reading list. If you know of any title by a woman writer translated into English (in any country!) from September 2019 through August 2020 and is not currently on the list, please let me know and I will add the information as quickly as possible! Similarly, if you see any mistake, please let me know so I can correct it.

August approaches, and while some things are the same, others are going to be different this year, for me at least. Since last year's "100 Best WIT" list, I've found myself thinking about the ethnic and racial disparities in WIT quite a bit. As I wrote in March, "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."

WITMonth has always been about inclusion. The first ever WITMonth in 2014 divided the month by regions or topics as an optional reader schedule. In retrospect, it was far from a perfect balance, lumping Asia, Africa, and Oceania together, but it was my first attempt at defining the women in translation movement as something that could not simply exist within the (white) borders of Europe. Over the years, I've tried to make a point to include or emphasize works by marginalized women writers of all sorts, whether it's in discussing country of origin, ethnic background, genre, etc. I've discussed the cultural/racial imbalances in translation more broadly, noting the strong Eurocentricity. I've tried to do my part, but that isn't always enough.

This year, I've decided to approach WITMonth a little differently than usual. While I recognize that I can't control how others view it, I can control what I do with it. I will continue to share other people's posts on works by all manner of women writers in translation, but I - for my part - will be focusing specifically on women writers from those countries, continents, subcontinents, and cultures that are too often brushed aside. The past few weeks have only strengthened this decision.

Coming from outside the Anglosphere myself, it is increasingly difficult to justify how and why certain books and writers are far more heavily promoted than others. As the #publishingpaidme has clearly demonstrated over the past few days, the English-language publishing industry is far from balanced even in English itself. While this will likely not be news to anyone, the fact is that Black writers are often paid significantly less than white writers, even when their works have proven themselves or they themselves show tremendous promise. The tag has led to spinoff discussions about racism within the publishing industry at large, ranging from conversations about racist assumptions regarding authors of color (e.g. that works need to be a certain way in order to fit the racial expectations) to flatly racist remarks by white publicists or sales teams to the racially biased power structures in publishing that effectively keep out many potential editors or publishers of color.

These conversations are pivotal, and they are pivotal within the context of translation as well. Here too there is a striking problem of racial imbalance, particularly among translators and publishers. Here too there are countless instances of bias against translators of color. Here too there are rampant assumptions about how works from certain countries or regions or cultures should be packaged for (predominantly white) "Western" audiences. It's an odd balance; I've often written about the difficulty in reading a book that doesn't feel geared to you as a reader, but it's also critical that we learn to read in these different cultural languages. It's just a matter of exposure and familiarity.

Reading is political, no matter what you may believe. Reading books by US-based women of color is as political a choice as only reading books by dead white European or English men. Every choice we make reflects politics in one form or other. Reading women in translation - reading women internationally - is a political choice.

For me, it's long meant an attempt to read as broadly as possible. "Reading the World" challenges don't feel to me like checklists I have to follow, rather they feel like doorways into new worlds. The more I read from other places, the more I'm able to learn without it being an explicit lesson or demanding anything of the writing as a foreign reader. I've learned to feel specific writing styles that are unique to certain literary cultures, and I hope to continue doing so in a way that respects these stories. This is also true for writers within "familiar" cultural contexts whose experiences shape their writing in unique and important ways (e.g. writers of color within dominantly white cultures, queer writers, etc.). Yes, it can often be viewed as "educational", but it's also a joy from the literary perspective. We should not hold up works by marginalized writers to a different standard than we would the so-called-and-very-much-not "default" straight white USian man...

WITMonth 2020 will begin in August as in previous years, and I intend to spend my time recognizing that good literature spans the entire globe. Recognizing that though they face extraordinary degrees of marginalization and dismissal, black women writers in translation have a lot to say from across several continents. So too Indigenous women writers in translation. Women in translation from across Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific. Women from all sorts of backgrounds. Here and there and everywhere.

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 5 | Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi | Review

Jokha Alharthi's Man Booker International winner Celestial Bodies (tr. Marilyn Booth) is an odd and special book, made odder by my own expectations of it. Not that these expectations came out of nowhere - this is another example of a book with a thoroughly misleading book cover blurb and marketing effort from almost all readers. From the marketing, the book casts itself as the story of three sisters whose love lives reflect societal changes in Oman over the 20th century. It's quite simple/standard, isn't it?

As interesting a summary as that may be, it sorely undersells the modernist, vaguely experimental, extremely nonlinear techniques that Celestial Bodies utilizes to tell its story. Little about this book is particularly standard, nor does it play to reader expectations all that much, despite how the marketing may spin it. (And what I've found fascinating is also how many other readers seem to have embraced this interpretation of the text, even though the book is... really not that.)

I've struggled to write my own summary of Celestial Bodies that doesn't feel similarly inaccurate. Is this truly a cultural history, or is it simply a story that encompasses within it 2-3 generations? Does describing societal changes really make it a book about society? Is it a family epic simply because it is largely focused on one family (and its offshoots)? None of the traditional phrases used to describe books feel entirely right. The best I could come up with was "a story told in a nonlinear style, tracking deep emotional divides of its characters". Ah yes, that's helpful! (Not.)

Part of the problem is that Celestial Bodies just doesn't follow the traditional, expected norms of "first woman writer from [insert country] to be translated into English"... which of course is not its fault at all. We've (wrongly) grown to assume that "firsts" serve as encompassing cultural introductions, plus the very concept of "first"s is fraught with issues. While Celestial Bodies can certainly teach quite a bit and sell itself on that front, that's just not what it's doing on a literary level. The story isn't straight-forward and designed to be easy reading; it switches narrators, perspective, and focus easily and quickly. Moreover, its nonlinear storytelling plays with memory and perspective in ways that constantly challenge the reader. The book feels thoroughly modernist in parts, with its contrast between the very structured narration of some characters versus the loose style of others. It's a novel that feels like it carries within it so much more than appears on the surface, even as it remains accessible to most readers. Thus it emerges an odd novel for its simultaneously standard story (...no, but really... is it, though?) and its very non-standard storytelling style.

From a plot/story perspective, Celestial Bodies doesn't have all that much. It's not the sort of book that will leave you feeling wholly satisfied upon its ending. The story feels more like layers peeling back than anything direct. It's also very imbalanced in terms of characters and narration; not all characters are equal in the novel. And to take it a step further, it turns out the story is less women-focused than its framing suggests. The stories are heavily reliant on each other and feed into each other in unique ways in terms of character interactions, but the most consistent narrator turns out to be Abdallah (the second narrator in the book, who even gets his own font in the Sandstone Press edition), with a loose, out-of-time story that seems to connect most of the other stories. So there's another point against the marketing.

On top of that, the three sisters touted as the main characters? We don't actually get to know all three to the same degree. We end up learning far more about the oldest, Mayya, than either Asma or Khawla; Khawla in particular is relegated to the margins of the story and never develops into her own whole character. Asma's story begins fairly strongly, but essentially gets cut off the moment she starts to have children, effectively finishing within the space of a few lines and never getting full closure. It was a startling decision - clever, perhaps from a storytelling perspective, but ultimately disconcerting.

These all added to the odd feeling that the book left me with. Nonlinear... sure. I liked that. But the fact that some characters get totally rushed conclusions (or have sidelined arcs to begin with) left me fairly cold. It's hard to feel for a character that just exists in the background. Unfortunately, Celestial Bodies occasionally feels like it wants to be more far-reaching than it is, as such forgetting the characters that it already has. It sprawls in a way that seems more suited to a book three times its size, on the one hand making me want more and technically appreciating the novel, and on the other hand... deeply frustrating me.

But there's a lot more to Celestial Bodies. Again, to counter some of the marketing, while it very much exists in the context of Oman's history and cultural shifts, it's not really about that. It's not written to exoticize or perform changes in Oman's society, they simply are. (Which is a nice change from many Western perspectives on "exotic"/unfamiliar countries and goodness do I dislike those sorts of stories...) This means that on the one hand, the book doesn't explain a lot of background/context (and shouldn't have to!), but on the other hand... it also feels like there are nuances I will never quite understand. Which is definitely neither a point against the book nor in favor of it, simply an observation.

Which leaves me with this review. I realize that until now, I have mostly focused on the things that bothered me. This review sounds like I didn't like the book, and that's really not the case - I enjoyed Celestial Bodies overall, found it interesting, and can easily recommend it to a lot of readers. That said. false advertising is obviously not the fault of the novel itself, but it's hard to shake off the effect that it had on my reading. I actually liked a lot about the book, whether the unique style, the way it challenged my expectations, its intelligence, and its clear-sighted approach to writing about cultural changes. I also liked many of the characters and the way that the story felt like it flowed between them. And yet I came away from the book feeling somewhat... cheated is maybe too strong a word, but I'm not sure what else works. Again, it's not the novel's fault, but I came into the story with certain expectations (from the publishers and marketing, specifically) that were not met. And within the novel itself, I felt like there just wasn't enough - at just under 250 pages, this isn't a particularly long book. It left me wanting more, both in terms of those underdeveloped characters and in terms of fully understanding how the stories that did exist fit together.

Wanting more isn't necessarily a bad thing. Here, it mostly washed for me: I was already somewhat dissatisfied by the framing, which meant that I was ready to be disappointed by something else. Ultimately, I wish I could read Celestial Bodies again with fresh eyes. I wish I could erase the perception that the misleading back cover blurb instilled in me and just enjoy the book for it is - a clever, intelligent story that does a lot of brilliant work within its pages. It doesn't have to be more than that. For most readers, the experience was just those positives and I totally understand that. I find myself maybe a little cooler on the book itself than some other readers, but also able to give a warm recommendation: This is very much a book worth reading. But it might help to know what you're (not) getting.

WITMonth Day 8 | Reading the world challenge (part 4)

Part 4, here we go! As always, remember that not every country is represented, nor that every country representation is necessarily in novel format! Links provided where I have them. Of course, if you have any recommendations for any of the missing countries (or missing languages), please let me know!

• Japan (Japanese): Yoko Ogawa - Hotel Iris
• Jordan - MISSING
• Kazakhstan - MISSING
• Korea, South (Korean): Bae Suah - A Greater Music
• Korea, North - MISSING
• Kuwait (Arabic): Fatimah Yousif al-Ali - "The Ringing Body"
• Kyrgyzstan - MISSING
• Laos - MISSING
• Latvia (Latvian): Aspazija - Poems
• Lebanon (Arabic): Hoda Barakat - The Stone of Laughter
• Lesotho - MISSING
• Libya (Arabic): Laila Neihoum - Poems
• Liechtenstsein - MISSING
• Lithuania (Lithuanian): Giedra Radvilavičiūtė - Those Whom I Would Like to Meet Again
• Luxembourg (French): Anise Koltz - At the Edge of Night
• Macedonia (Macedonian): Lidija Dimkovska - A Spare Life
• Madagascar (French): Bao Ralambo - "Blastomycosis"
• Malaysia - MISSING
• Maldives - MISSING
• Mali - MISSING
• Malta (Maltese): lare Azzopardi - "Green Line"
• Mauritius (French): Nathacha Appanah - The Last Brother
• Mexico (Spanish): Cristina Rivera Garza - The Iliac Crest
• Moldova - MISSING
• Monaco - MISSING
• Mongolia - MISSING
• Montenegro - MISSING
• Morocco (Arabic): Leila Abouzeid - Year of the Elephant
• Morocco (Tashelhit): Mririda n-Ayt Attiq - Tassawt Voices
• Mozambique (Portuguese): Paulina Chiziane - The First Wife
• Myanmar (Burmese): Nu Nu Yi - Smile as they Bow
• Nepal (Nepali): Jhamak Ghimire - A Flower in the Midst of Thorns
• Netherlands, The (Dutch): Tonke Dragt - The Letter for the King
• Nicaragua (Spanish): Gioconda Belli - The Scroll of Seduction
• Niger - MISSING
• Nigeria - MISSING
• Norway (Norwegian): Hanne Ørstavik - Love
• Oman (Arabic): Jokha Alharthi - Celestial Bodies

As you can see, there are still a lot of gaps in this list! Many countries and languages remain unexplored. As always, any recommendations are most welcome, especially since a full version of this list will eventually be published more conveniently. In the meantime, however... happy reading!

Reading the world challenge (part 3)

I've already begun to make progress on my reading... yet haven't finished publishing the titles I hope to read! Here are a few more (of which I've already actually managed to read a couple!):

• Denmark (Danish): Suzanne Brøgger - The Jade Cat
• Djibouti - MISSING
• Dominican Republic (Spanish): Various - Praises and Offenses: Three Women Poets from the Dominican Republic
• East Timor - MISSING
• Ecaudor (Spanish): Luz Argentina Chiriboga - On Friday Night
• Egypt (Arabic): Nawal El Saadawi - Woman at Point Zero
• El Salvador (Spanish): Claribel Alegría - Woman of the River
• Equatorial Guinea (Spanish): Trifonia Melibea Obono - La Bastarda
• Eritrea (Tigrinya): Haregu Keleta - "The Girl Who Carried a Gun" (x)
• Estonia (Estonian): Kristiina Ehin - Walker on Water
• Ethiopia (Italian): Gabriella Ghermandi - Queen of Flowers and Pearls
• Ethiopia (Amharic) - MISSING
• Finland (Finnish): Eeva-Liisa Manner - Girl Upon Heaven's Pier
• France (French/Old French): Various - French Women Poets of Nine Centuries
• Gabon (French): Angèle Rawiri - The Fury and Cries of Women
• Georgia (Georgian): Various - A House with No Doors
• Germany (German): Yoko Tawada - Memoirs of a Polar Bear
• Greece (Greek): Penelope Delta - A Tale Without a Name
• Guatemala (Spanish): Rigoberta Menchú - I, Rigoberta Menchú
• Guinea - MISSING
• Guinea-Bissau - MISSING
• Haiti (French): Marie Vieux-Chavet - Dance on the Volcano
• Honduras (Spanish): Clementina Suárez - Clementina Suárez: Her Life and Poetry
• Hungary (Hungarian): Magda Szabó - The Door
• Iceland (Icelandic): Ragna Sigurðardóttir - The Perfect Landscape
• India (Assamese): Arupa Patangia Kalita - Written in Tears
• India (Bengali): Leela Majumdar - The Burmese Box
• India (Gujarati): Dhiruben Patel - Rainbow at Noon
• India (Hindi): Geetanjali Shree - The Empty Space
• India (Kannada): Mamta Sagar - Hide and Seek: Selected Poems
• India (Old Kannada): Akka Mahadevi - Songs for Siva
• India (Malayalam): K. R. Meera - Hangwoman
• India (Marathi): Shanta Gokhale - Crowfall
• India (Odia): Susmita Bagchi - Children of a Better God
• India (Pali): Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women
• India (Punjabi): MISSING
• India (Tamil): Amai - In a Forest, a Deer
• India (Urdu): Qurratulain Hyder - River of Fire
• Indonesia (Indonesian): Okky Madasari - The Years of the Voiceless
• Iran (Persian): Parinous Saniee - The Book of Fate
• Iraq (Arabic): Dunya Mikhail - The War Works Hard
• Ireland (Irish): Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh - The Coast Road
• Israel (Hebrew): Leah Goldberg - Poems
• Italy (Italian): Margaret Mazzantini - Twice Born
• Ivory Coast (French): Véronique Tadjo - The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of Rwanda

That's it for now, still working on finalizing the list. As you can see, still many titles missing... still many places where I feel I don't necessarily have the best options picked out. If you have any recommendations for missing titles - or recommendations for India in particular, any language - I would greatly appreciate it! Regardless, feel free to share any titles you might be interested in for these (or any) countries. How would your list look?

WITMonth Day 22 | Reading the world challenge (part 2)

Announcing the project is great and all, but what about the books I hope to read? Reminder: Not every country is represented by a full-length book, nor is every country or language represented. If nothing else, this is a partial list. For poems or short stories available online, I've included the site at which the work may be read.

So here's the first part of my work-in-progress "Reading the world in women in translation" list! Countries A-C...

Note: Obviously please let me know of any noticeable errors in this list! Also, feel free to chime in with your own personal recommendations for a certain country/language! Your recommendations are worth more than my own random, eclectic collection. Especially since enough of the titles here are either out of print or difficult to track down, any recommendations for the more off-the-beaten-track languages would be much appreciated!

Note the second: Due to an oversight in my own record-keeping, this list will currently be without translator credits. However, as I mark each book off my list and review them, translators will obviously get their due credit! Apologies for now.

• Afghanistan (Dari): Zahra Hosseinzadeh - Poem (WWB)
• Afghanistan (Pashto): Parvin Faiz Zadah Malal - "Hate" (WWB)
• Albania (Albanian): Luljeta Lleshanaku - Child of Nature
• Algeria (French): Assia Djebar - Women of Algiers in Their Apartment
• Algeria (Arabic): Ahlam Mosteghanemi - Memory in the Flesh
• Angola (Portuguese): Ana Paula Tavares - Poem (WWB)
• Argentina (Spanish): Silvina Ocampo - Thus Were Their Faces
• Armenia (Armenian): Yessayan Zabel - The Gardens of Silihdar
• Armenia (Russian): Mariam Petrosyan - The Gray House
• Australia (Nyulnyul): Mary Charles - Winin: Why the Emu Cannot Fly
• Austria (German): Adelheid Popp - The Autobiography of a Working Woman
• Azerbaijan (Azerbaijani): Afag Masug - Short stories 
• Bahrain (Arabic): Hamda Khamis - Poems (from Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry)
• Bangladesh (Bengali): Begum Rokeya - Sultana's Dream
• Belarus (Russian): Svetlana Alexievich - Voices from Chernobyl
• Belgium (French): Madeleine Bourdouxhe - La Femme de Gilles
• Belgium (Dutch): Chika Unigwe - On Black Sisters' Street
• Benin - Women Writing Africa Vol. 2
• Bhutan - MISSING
• Bolivia (Spanish): Liliana Colanzi - Our Dead World
• Bosnia and Herzegovina - MISSING
• Botswana - Women Writing Africa Vol. 1
• Brazil (Portuguese): Various - Passages: Women Writing Brazil
• Brunei - MISSING
• Bulgaria (Bulgarian): Elisaveta Bagriana - Penelope of the Twentieth Century
• Burkina Faso - Women Writing Africa Vol. 2
• Burindi - MISSING
• Cambodia - MISSING
• Cameroon (French): Werewere Liking - The Amputated Memory
• Canada (French): Naomi Fontaine - Kuessipan
• Cape Verde (Portuguese): Orlanda Amarilis - "Nina" (x)
• Central African Republic - MISSING
• Chad - MISSING
• Chile (Spanish): Gabriela Mistral - Selected Works
• China (Chinese): Can Xue - Frontier
• Colombia (Spanish): Carolina Sanín - The Children
• Comoros - MISSING
• Democratic Republic of Congo - MISSING
• Republic of Congo - MISSING
• Costa Rica (Spanish): Tatiana Lobo - Assault on Paradise
• Croatia (Croatian): Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić - Croatian Tales of Long Ago
• Cuba (Spanish): Daína Chaviano - The Island of Eternal Love
• Cyprus (Greek): Myrto Azina Chronides - The Experiment
• Czechia (Czech): Petra Hůlová - All This Belongs to Me

That's all for today, folks, meet you back in a few days to explore countries D-H! Again, please feel free to leave your own recommendations in the comments or on Twitter. The more the merrier!

WITMonth Day 16 | Reading the world challenge (part 1)

One of my favorite things that I've discovered since starting this blog and reading more international literature is Ann Morgan's A Year of Reading the World blog and project. The project was the first time I'd encountered anyone with the explicit goal of reading a book from every country in the world. While the project was significantly more ambitious than anything I could ever imagine for myself, I found myself enraptured both by Morgan's exploration of the world through literature, and her methodology. This was a clear, organized project.

It's been a few years since Morgan's project ended, but I often find myself thinking about it. Over the past several months, I have also begun seeing whether I can replicate it, this time only with women writers in translation. This is a significantly more difficult challenge: not only are there many countries from which no work by women has been translated, there are also quite a few countries on earth in which literature is almost exclusively written in English. 

But this doesn't mean the overall conceptual challenge is impossible. And thus the challenge I formed for myself began simply (presentation inspired by the Bechdel test):

1. Read a written work from every country on Earth
2. By a woman writer
3. Originally written in a language other than English

You'll notice that I didn't say "fiction" or "literature". To be honest, my original intention was to focus on longform fiction, but I soon realized how utterly impossible that would be. Too many countries have only a handful of works coming out of them, fewer still by women. These works are often individual short stories or poems or essays, compiled in various anthologies or academic collections. I decided it would be silly to omit those, simply because they were not of enough "mass". 

As I progressed in my research, I also realized that I wanted these other works. I want to read Angolan poetry. I want to read Brazilian queer feminist critiques. I want to read Tibetan memoirs. I want to read whatever the too-often underrepresented women of the world have to tell me, whatever it may be. All the complexities of the world that are wrapped up in this.

This led to another question: Shouldn't I be seeking out as many languages too? And so the project expanded somewhat there, as well. I began searching for as many works from as many different languages, within these countries (as well as including indigenous languages in various English speaking countries). This subproject has proven significantly more difficult than I had imagined, but I'm not giving up. Unlike Morgan, I'm not even going to try to read these works within a year... perhaps not even a decade. This is a lifelong project, with the simple goal of reading as widely and as fully as I can.

I don't know if other readers will want to join me on this project. It won't be simple, certainly, but it also won't be singular. I've been working on compiling my own personal reading list for several months now, but the truth is that it's just one (very limited!) list. Many countries are still missing (though it is possible that I've simply overlooked certain works!), and even more languages are absent. The list itself is still incomplete; as of writing this post, I have only collected titles through "Pakistan". Some countries have multiple titles, others have only one. I hope that this list will grow with time, and I hope that once I start sharing it with you all (soon!), you may add your own voices - books that are missing, books that perhaps aren't all that, and authors that you believe should be translated so that they may appear on these lists in the future.

This project will take many, many years. I'm so excited.