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 16 | Languages and power | Thoughts

One of the frequent critiques WITMonth faces is in its centering of Anglo-American/English-language cultural expectations. Why, some international readers argue, do I center Anglo culture in demanding that translations not include books originally written in English? I've addressed these points in the past (and will address them more fully in the near future), but today I want to focus on something that spins off from this question: How do we address the power imbalances between different languages? How do we address the power imbalances in translation that follow the status of different languages? And what does it ultimately mean for readers?

Languages reflect culture in more ways than one. As a native bilingual myself who grew up in a multilingual household (among my grandparents and parents, there are six native languages alone; including the different languages learned by family members or spoken by friends or my surroundings, the number crosses 10), I have long been aware of the ways that different languages reflect the cultures of those speaking those languages, not to mention the ways in which multilingualism itself shapes subcultures. I have subsequently had the great pleasure of being exposed to many different languages throughout my lifetime, though I unfortunately have not had the opportunity to really learn most. 

When we talk about literature in translation - or literature more broadly - not all languages are created equal, nor is their origin. French - a language with ~80 million native speakers - is the language with the most translations into English, yet these are overwhelmingly from France itself (despite ~274 million fluent French speakers estimated worldwide). Meanwhile, Hindi - a language with ~322 million native speakers - barely rates in terms of translations into English that are publicized in the English-only speaking world (i.e. the US, UK, etc.). These sorts of power imbalances are evident in translation to other languages as well, where English-language literature is often a dominating force.

What often ends up happening is that languages with less power - typically those spoken by fewer people, or with a "lesser" cultural impact (in English, at least) - don't get translated. Or, rather, they often don't get written in the first place. In countless regions across the world, colonial languages (and not just European, though obviously these dominate in some regions more than others) are favored over native/local languages because they are likely to garner greater readership and indeed exposure. So you're likely to have read several Nigerian writers in English, but have probably never read a work translated from Yoruba (~40 million native speakers). In this same way, most English-language readers have read works by Indian writers, yet no works translated from Indian languages. As always, the problem is only exacerbated for women writers, who face even greater hurdles in getting published, publicized, and translated than men. 

And it's not just English, of course. French, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Portuguese have lessened the power of countless local languages in different places around the world in some degree or other, not necessarily in the same ways. The process also predates the modern era, with languages frequently dying out over time (though nothing is quite on the scale of our current linguistic mass extinction). When we (I) talk about reading more works by African women writers in translation, that mostly means reading works written in French. For the Caribbean or Latin America, it often means works written in French, Spanish, or Portuguese (occasionally also Dutch). Sometimes, this is the result of generations of colonial rule (Latin America); sometimes, it's the effect of relatively modern, swift homogenization efforts (China). 

Writers are, of course, at perfect liberty to choose the language in which they want to write. I will not look down on any author who chooses to write in a more popular language because it means their work is more likely to be read widely. I will, however, note that gendered power imbalances often mean that women are the ones who choose to write in languages other than their own. To take the example of Yoruba that I mentioned earlier, literally every single author listed on Wikipedia as "Yoruba-language writers" is a man. It's a pattern I've found across many different languages and cultures. It doesn't mean that there aren't women writing in different native languages (again: see this year's 50 Day Countdown), but fewer than I would expect or hope for.

As readers - particularly as readers who obviously do not have access to every single language on Earth - we have limited control over the books that we can read, by virtue of availability. As I've said before many times in reference to the lack of women writers in translation (in English and elsewhere): Readers cannot be expected to love books that they haven't read, and they cannot be expected to read books that they cannot access. As a reader who does have the option of reading in English, for example, I'm exposed to a lot more literature than I would be if I only read books translated into Hebrew. English - even as a secondary language, even as an overly dominant colonial language - has immense power. 

But if we're going to talk about the lack of women in translation, we have to understand the sources of the problem, and this is absolutely one of them. We also have to be able to address the ways in which different languages are treated in translation, acknowledging the at-times racist power structures that elevate certain languages far above others (e.g. Norwegian is more translated into English than Marathi) and how these affect women writers in particular. 

We have to be able to talk about what it means to read works that were written in an author's second language, whether it's English or not, to address the way this often shapes an author's popularity or cultural impact. And this is especially important because the language that we write in shapes the work itself. A story that is written from within a certain culture or community and is assumed to be for that culture or community is not going to be the same as a story that is written for an external audience. Moreover, writing changes across different languages and comfort levels per language. I'm a native bilingual and my writing does not sound the same in English and Hebrew, by virtue of the books I've read and the respective literary styles that guide each language. And I'm not even a writer!

Ultimately, we need to remember this one point: Languages have power and unfortunately that power has enormous influence on the books that we read. Whether viewing this matter through an English-language lens (this is a blog in English, after all...) or through the lens of any other native language, we need to be able to pause and ask ourselves why we're exposed to certain books and not others, why we're familiar with certain languages and not others, and why we ultimately have a literary landscape that favors some types of writers over others. And we need to do this both in the context of recognizing where women in translation reside as a group, as well as the imbalances among women writers in translation.

WITMonth Day 12 | Regional and cultural disparities in a complicated world

There's been an interesting recurring question that's come up since I published my personal WITMonth plans, in which I announced my intention to read and discuss books from specific regions of the world during August. In comments and elsewhere, some readers have asked me why I prepared banners for certain author groups and not others. Where were Latin American women? Where were non-South Asian writers? It's a legitimate question and I think it's time to address it.

Last week, I posted the full list of this year's 50 Day Countdown. Like last year's list, every choice this year was deliberate and pointed. Last year, I sought to have a list that was thoroughly comprised of women of color, without a single white European woman writer. While it's true that not all European writers are made "equal" in terms of industry attention and care, the status of most women writers from outside of Europe is significantly worse off. This year, I wanted to focus on women of African descent specifically (partly inspired by Margaret Busby's New Daughters of Africa, a book I'll be discussing more in depth in the future), but soon realized that it's not just African or African-descent women writers in translation who are often underserved. Indigenous women writers - particularly those writing in indigenous languages - are also a rare sight in translation, even when coming from the closest possible literary traditions (see: Canadian First Nations French-language writers). South and Southeast Asian writers are similarly starkly undertranslated as compared with East Asian writers. And Middle Eastern and Caribbean writers are also often left in the wayside.

And so this year's WITMonth countdown and plan were born. 

It's hard for me to give a clear name for my focus. "Underrepresented in English" is incomplete, after all - many of the writers in the 50 Day Countdown and those I'm reading this month are currently living and working out of Europe. A decent proportion are mixed race writers who specifically write about racial and cultural identity. As I've already mentioned this month, French is the most-translated-into-English language and is a dominant language among African writers (thanks, colonialism?), yet African women writers are extraordinarily rare in translation. 

Similarly, my focus on writers from the Americas is blatantly skewed. To put it bluntly: I'm not particularly interested in white Latin American women writers this year. While recognizing that within a US-specific context some Latin American writers share a certain status and while continuing to recognize that like all women in translation, all Latin American WIT are underrepresented on a big-picture scale, there's no denying that Latin America has its own vast diversity which is rarely reflected in translation. Frankly, the most obvious example of this is the fact that Argentina is the Latin American country with the most translations into English, and Argentina is overwhelmingly a country of white European immigrants. Even among the most popular Mexican writers, a not-small proportion are writers of wholly white European background. The Americas have so many voices from so many different backgrounds, yet like with so many other examples, we're not truly given access to most.

It's a recurring pattern. Take Indian women writers, for example. Setting aside the fact that most of the highly-publicized-in-English Indian writers write in English, I've long known that I've read works by far too few Indian women writers. Except I soon realized that I didn't even know of Indian women writers from the vast majority of different Indian languages. India is a massive and massively diverse country (subcontinent!), with literally a dozen different languages with over 30 million native speakers! The fact that the only Indian language I had read full-length works from was Bengali was something that I was deeply unhappy about; I'm glad that I've had the chance to correct this somewhat of late (having read a work translated from Tamil and a collection from Odia), but this is nowhere near where I want to be. There actually are many works translated into English and published across India, but they're just often unavailable to different international audiences. (This is true of a surprising amount of countries where English is a common bridge language, and if anyone in the industry wants to do something about it... please?) 

Meanwhile, like with the imbalances within Latin America, can we really say that this is comparable to the amount of books by women writers translated from Korean and Japanese? Not to diminish from these works - again, there are huge cultural barriers that already place these works at a far greater disadvantage relative to works by white European writers! - but the skew feels large enough that I personally decided to wait a few more weeks with some of the Japanese and Korean women writers currently on my reading list. (And there are plenty.) 

So what have I been reading? Black women writers, mostly, and I've been trying to boost up my reading list even further. Indian women writers as well, trying to get my hands on different writers from different languages and backgrounds. (Instagram has been amazing for this, there are a bunch of wonderful Bookstagrammers promoting incredible-looking books by Indian women writers!) I've tried to spread out into regions I'm really unfamiliar with, like Tahiti (Chantal T. Spitz's Island of Shattered Dreams, which I hope to review soon) and Micronesia at large (albeit not exactly a work filled with women in translation, but still very much within the spirit of: Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia). I'm hoping to read more works from women writers from across the Arab world (taking much inspiration from ArabLit, as usual). And yes, I'd like to make sure that my reading remains varied among these groups, whether in terms of promoting queer women writers from around the world or just voices from all sorts of different backgrounds (religious, socio-economic, cultural, physical, etc.).

My goal isn’t to define or judge anyone else's reading choices. For a lot of readers Latin American and East Asian writers aren’t dominant voices in any meaningful way. White European women writers in translation are still absolutely underrepresented relative to the broader literary landscape. Every time we recognize that and recognize the biases within this conversation, we're taking steps in the right direction! But there's still more. This is just my little bit.

WITMonth Day 8 | Accessibility and women in translation

A topic I've found myself thinking about a lot over the past year is accessibility. Accessibility can mean a lot of different things, from a disability context to an international one to simply a financial question. These all intersect pretty seriously with the question of women in translation becoming "mainstream" (as I often describe it) and honestly needed to have been properly addressed until now.

It's no secret that a large chunk of books by women writers that are translated into English are published by small independent presses. These presses - wonderful, gorgeous, labor-of-love indie presses - are often non-profits, cash-strapped, or of limited operations on the whole; there are all sorts of stories about indie presses getting caught off guard by the success of a certain book (WITty or otherwise) and having to rush reprints, or else somewhat sadder stories of indie presses "losing" an author they built up to fame and award-recognition getting snatched for a lot more money at a larger press. Another major force in publishing literature in translation (albeit far, far fewer women writers) is academic publishing, which is similarly somewhat more limited in the reach of their books.

Two things are important to remember about these presses: The first is that their books are, on average, slightly more expensive than those of larger publishing houses. Even the slimmest novellas can cost almost as much as a mainstream full-length novel from the big names. The second is that their books do not typically have the same reach as those by mainstream publications.

Together, these two issues combine to mean something fairly disappointing about indie/academic presses - their books are rarely available to the wide public and are almost always unavailable to readers with disabilities or impairments who mostly read audio- or eBooks. Though eBooks have become a lot more prevalent among indie presses in the past few years, the lack of audiobooks means that a lot of readers who would otherwise be happy to read works by women writers from around the world simply don't have the option. While thankfully some of the biggest name authors have been released in audiobook format, a shocking amount have not. And the usual biases we find in translated literature overall are reflected in audiobook recordings as well. Not everyone can be Elena Ferrante... Literally as I was writing this post, my sister forwarded to me two separate audiobook requests by different friends. When I went to look for some of my favorite women in translation from the past few years, I found that they were nowhere to be found. Too many readers are losing out.

The issue extends further. Not having audiobooks or eBooks also affects readers who primarily use digital libraries in order to read. I know many young people in particular who rely on digital libraries such as Overdrive/Libby for their reading, and many more who have leaned on those services even more since coronavirus closed their local libraries. Many international readers also utilize these digital libraries, coordinating access with local readers who don't mind sharing their details. (Yes, this is a thing.)

And it's not just a matter of audio- or eBooks. Smaller print runs mean that indie and academic publications are virtually nonexistent in smaller libraries or even in many bookstores. Almost every time I mention the women in translation project to someone new in the English-language context - even to avid readers! - there's the moment when they realize that they've at most read one or two books by women writers from non-English languages, usually something like Diary of Anne Frank or Pippi Longstocking and that's it. The process of finding the right books is often a challenge, with readers frequently telling me that they struggle to read WIT because they can't access it. It's not at their library, it's not at their local big-name bookstore (at least in the US), and it's rarely if ever promoted or easily found on Amazon through browsing. (Bookshop.org so far actually does promote a decent amount of WIT on their front page, so that's exciting!) Those who still wish to purchase the books are then met with the uncomfortable roadblock that is the higher price tag (particularly when purchasing from independent bookstores as well) - what should the reader do now?

Finally, accessibility and availability is also a problem that crosses borders. I don't talk about this on the blog very often, but I've occasionally tweeted about how very difficult it is for me to acquire books. I don't live in an English-speaking country. I rely on bookstores/websites with international shipping in order to read books published in English. If a book isn't available through one of 2-3 major sites that are available to me, the book simply isn't available to me. And for the record - for all sorts of reasons, I don't get many review copies (just the rare book, and usually shipped to a US address that I collect months after the fact). Like many other readers from around the world, I am at the mercy of international rights and availability, which are often... not helpful.

Each one of these issues can feel disconnected from women in translation specifically because they just as easily apply to men writers in translation, but there is an important intersection here: If we want people to read more of a thing, they need to be able to access it. That might mean that the books need to be reasonably priced, that might mean that the books need to be conveniently sold, that might mean that the books need to be in the appropriate formats, etc etc. The major problem that the women in translation movement faces (in English) is a lack of global awareness and acknowledgement. But how can readers address a problem that they don't see? How can they read books that aren't available to them? It's the exact same problem that lies at the core of the translation imbalance itself - readers rely on books to be available to them in order to read them!

I don't know what can be done, honestly. These questions all seem to me like something that needs to be handled within the industry. But the questions do feel like they need to be addressed, and soon - readers deserve better.

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.

WIT, the feminist movement, and awareness

In the four years I've worked on the women in translation project, I'll admit that my goals, aspirations, and thoughts have evolved somewhat. In 2014, the day before the inaugural WITMonth began, I posted an essay about women in literature in general. The fight, as I saw it then, was about convincing readers of translated literature that women writers were worthy of the same space and recognition as men.

Four years later, I can tentatively state that I believe that the message has gotten across. The literature in translation community is quite small, and though many editors and publishers still haven't made any significant strides to correct their sexist approaches and biases, enough have. And more importantly, readers have clearly embraced the movement to promote more women writers in translation, with WITMonth growing from year to year. While the ratios have yet to change in any significant way, there is a clear effort on the part of many newer, younger publishers to produce only balanced catalogs. I am confident that we will begin to see the statistical progress in the next few years.

And so the goalposts have moved, just a bit. If four years ago I hoped that someone - anyone! - would just become aware of the problem, I have recently realized that this problem is actually far deeper than just the literature in translation community. In places where I would expect some awareness or acknowledgement of the lack of women writers in translation, of the marginalization that women creating works (or writing feminist criticism) in languages other than English face on a larger scale, I find a tremendous, very obvious gap.

My gut has been telling me for several years that the problem of women in translation belongs, in large part, to the global lack of literature in translation available in the English-speaking world. Most countries in the world import a lot of literature (much of it from English, though this is a different matter worth discussing another time), with translations subsequently normalized. English is perhaps not unique in its assumption of lingual-cultural dominance, but it certainly ends up getting away with it on a far greater scale than most other languages. The reasons for this are vast and complicated and I will not get into them at this time. However, one thing remains certain: most native English speakers, across the board, struggle to engage with art that is not originally in English, whether it is music, film, television, or books.

It's only in recent years that I've discovered that this almost willful ignorance extends to circles I naively imagined to be more aware. Intellectuals and academics aren't more prone to reading literature in translation; on the contrary, I have found many to often use that (often irrelevant) line about how "something gets lost in translation". Among feminists - even self-identified intersectional feminists - the awareness gap seems even wider.

More problematic still is the fact that many of these so-called intersectional feminists (and can feminism really be intersectional without being international...?) will even maintain that Anglo-American cultural norms are default. I have (on multiple occasions) had to argue with "intersectional" feminists that applying USian cultural norms on another culture is not only inaccurate, it may at times be entirely contrary. Not every conversation will sound the same way in a different culture. Not every feminist act will apply to every culture. And many acts that Anglo-American feminists might scoff at as "not really feminist" may actually be remarkably radical and/or outright rebellious for another culture.

Of course this ignorance applies to literature as well. As much as certain feminists do make a point to read literature in translation, you'd be hard-pressed to find most prominent feminist critics discussing and giving weight to exactly the women who most need a space in which to be heard. When I asked feminist-identifying folk on Twitter whether they read literature in translation, a surprisingly high number of respondents said they wish they read more women in translation, but felt as though they were never exposed to those books or struggled to find them in libraries/bookstores. Several noted that with so much literary hype surrounding new Anglo releases, it was hard to make time for women in translation, who are rarely hyped to the same degree (with the rare exception, as with men in translation).

It ends up being frustrating on two fronts. The first is the feeling that I have to fight for intersectionality to include internationalism, even though this is a fundamental tenant of the concept. With literature playing such an important role in terms of introducing readers to new concepts, the oversight here feels particularly egregious. I shouldn't have to explain to readers who fight for "diversity in YA" that USian kids also need to be introduced to kids from other countries, whose culture is different from theirs (and written to match that culture, and not an Anglo-American readership). I shouldn't have to explain to feminist critics that queer feminist theory is markedly different in languages that have inherently gendered words. This should be obvious.

The second front is the sense that would-be readers - those who aren't averse to anything in translation because "something gets lost in translation" - are missing out on so many opportunities to read brilliant women who are translated because these books are never promoted to remotely the same degree as lesser books in English. (For the record, I have found this to be true also in Hebrew, where translations from English almost always win out over translations from any other language. Hype is inevitable.) Most books by women in translation are published either by smaller presses or AmazonCrossing (which, due to a lot of reasons, doesn't always end up with the best translations or do a lot of self-promotion, even if some of their books are excellent; on the other hand, they also publish a lot of genre lit, so that's something!). These books are, for various reasons, not getting into the hands of readers. They are getting lost, and readers are losing.

There's a lot that we can do to improve the situation. For me, it comes back to that original WITMonth goal: raise awareness. But it is no longer my goal to raise awareness within a closed community of those who already read literature in translation in a targeted, directed way. I now want to reach all readers and raise awareness of individual books, getting them into the hands of as many prospective readers as possible (see: #WITreviews). I now want to raise awareness among intersectional feminists, to see them embrace internationalism in the way that anti-racism has become a core tenant of the movement. I now want to raise awareness among feminist critics and academics, particularly in light of how many fascinating-seeming feminist theory papers I have stumbled across in my searches that have never been translated into English.

None of this is easy. It wasn't easy getting WITMonth off the ground, either. But I firmly believe that in a few years from now, I will be able to look back and say that I have achieved my perhaps-too-ambitious goals. Certainly, I will be able to look back with a sense of pride that I have tried.

WITMonth Day 8 | Ancient writing and untranslated classics | Thoughts

Earlier this year, I stumbled across The Penguin Book of Women Poets in a wonderful used bookstore (it was there I picked up a gorgeous two-volume edition of The Mill on the Floss from the early 20th century for what even the bookseller admitted was way too little money). I leafed through it, expecting a text that would - like almost all anthologies -  focus on Anglo-American writers. At first glance, it seemed like the anthology was actually quite diverse and I impulse-purchased it.

It was only later when I got home that I realized how diverse this collection actually is. The collection starts in what they call "The Ancient World", but it's not limited to our typical scope of "classics" - alongside the predictable Greek poetry (and Sappho fragments), there's Egyptian, Israelite, Chinese and Tamil poetry too. The book then progresses to the "Middle Period" (600-1500), which includes writers from Ireland, Wales, England, Arabia, Sanskrit India, Japan, Germany, Korea, China, Moorish Spain... And onward in history: Italy, and Sephardic ballads, and Vietnam, and Mexico, and Sweden, and Cuba, and Turkey, and New Zealand Māori, and Native American. It's a stunning display of what the world has to offer, even when certain literary traditions (African, for example) are completely ignored.

The collection is imperfect in many regards, but the thing that struck me most was how practically every writer in the collection is by this point "classic". The collection was published in 1978 - even the contemporaries of the era are now classics. But many of them remain untranslated overall.

I talked about classics a lot last year, as well as the problem of untranslated masterpieces. There's something extremely frustrating in going through lists of women writers from around the world (and from vastly different eras of history) and discovering that only a handful have been translated. The same process happened with The Penguin Book of Women Poets - dozens of women writers from almost all walks of life, with rare collections here and there.

Perhaps I'm being unfair. After all, in any given collection of men (or... any given collection that dubs itself generic and then has only 15% women writers), many writers will also only have recognition within the context of the collection. Women are not unique in facing almost insurmountable difficulties in getting translated, we know this already. Yet the gap seems ever more frustrating with women writers because of how senseless it remains in the modern context.

When rediscovering writers today, why don't we look at those underrepresented women writers? What's stopping us from bringing to light those classic works, those classic writers?

Women have always written: in ancient times, in modern times, in medieval times. Did they always write as much as men? Of course not, there have been periods in history where women were not taught to read and write. (On the flip side, women today seem to write more than men by most measures and yet here we are.) I could never expect perfect parity when it comes to classic translations. But I do expect basic representation. I do expect publishers of "undiscovered classics" to identify those texts that were written by women writers as well. I do expect literary and historical scholars to commit as much attention to women throughout history as they might to contemporary men.

It's this sort of discrepancy which makes me desperately want more publishers to take part in the Year of Publishing Women. Yes, you'll probably always have more classics by men than by women. Most years will probably see only one undiscovered classic by a woman writer brought to light. But can we have one year when we get some of those well-deserving classics by women writers? One year when we can focus on how women demanded rights, criticized slavery and built abolitionist movements, fought in revolutions, ruled countries, fell in love, lived lives, wrote songs and poems and stories, and existed? Throughout all of history, across the entire world?

Is that too much to hope for...?

WITMonth Day 22 - Anthologies? More like manthologies

One of the ideas that's cropped up in the comments here for finding new authors has been exploring different anthologies to find new and perhaps more obscure women writers in translation. While this idea at first seemed a little minor to me, I quickly realized that it's actually brilliant - a lot of authors have their short stories translated long before their full-length works are.

I was so very excited. I really, really shouldn't have been.

You see, anthologies largely reflect the literary culture around them. Yes, you can occasionally find a book like Cubana (which I recently stumbled across and picked up at a used bookstore) that is dedicated to women writers in particular, but most anthologies give a broader spread. And most are so, so male.

Here's a quick rundown of the four anthologies I checked out from the library this week:

1. Contemporary Georgian Fiction - 4 out of 20 stories are by women. 20%, less than the overall translation average
2. Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories - 9 out of 52 stories are by women. 17%, less than the overall translation average
3. Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories - 9 out of 35 stories are by women. 26%, just around the average
4. Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused: Fiction from Today's China - 5 out of 20. 25%, just below the overall average

I won't pretend that I'm not discovering some old-new writers in these collections, or that because some focus on older literature it may justify the relatively low ratios. I won't pretend that they aren't doing good work for literature overall. I also won't dismiss them entirely, considering the higher male-to-female ratio in other anthologies (though when I say "higher", I mean around 33%...).

However. This is something we need to bear in mind. When we look at translations, we also need to look at short stories and at anthologies and at collections. Until now, I had sort of hoped that these collections would reflect better on translation rates than the current landscape. But it turns out that these collections - including more recently published ones, such as the Georgian collection (from 2012) - mirror the problems found elsewhere, and indeed often give us worse results.

I will continue to use collections and anthologies as a resource, for all writers. But once again we see the problem that led to the very initiation of WITMonth - where are the women writers? We keep searching, and we keep discussing. This is the only solution.

Women in Literature | An essay

Over the years I've been involved in literary review, I've said and written many different things about women writers, and particularly in recent months about women writers in translation. I've discussed possible differences in men and women's writing, a young adult literary culture that courts young women so passionately it alienates young men, VIDA statistics about women reviewers, writers espousing clearly sexist beliefs, gendered marketing, and most recently the striking gap between men and women writers when it comes to literary translations into English. There are still essentially 3 books by men for every single book by a woman in translation. My thoughts and ideas have evolved with time, often momentarily contradicting each other and occasionally living in an outrightly discordant land. The matter of gender - and gender equality - in literature has fascinated me for years, but never has it been more important to me than now. Nor, I think, more important for the broader literary community.

But numbers alone do not indicate why this is a problem, nor do they reconcile the seeming contradictions between my own arguments against the imbalance, and any reasoning for fighting. Simply put: why does it matter? What difference does it make if - as I claim - there is no tangible distinction between men and women writers?

A brief history of literary suppression

One of the books recommended to me when I began the Women in Translation project was Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing, which I think ought to be required reading for anyone interested in literary gender dynamics, feminism, or literature in general. Russ's premise for the book is that as long as there have been women writers - and she makes a point of emphasizing that as long as there has been literature, there have been women writers - there has been a male-dominated literary culture that has attempted to discredit their works. Her examples are largely Anglo-American and mostly post-18th century, yet they paint a fascinating portrait of a broader culture. Sadly, despite having been written in the 1970s, Russ's academic take-down is still depressingly relevant today. While women writers are now taught in schools and university courses, you will still find that they are taught significantly less, and that the group of women writers who have been accepted into the "canon" is very sharply focused on a handful of Anglo-American women. You'll also still find professors who disparage women's writing, and refuse to teach their works (or works by writers of color).

Russ's arguments hinge on two key points:

1. Women write.
2. The initial response by the literary elite will always be an attempt to discredit that woman's writing.

I do Russ a great disservice by whittling her points down to these two generalizations. Russ goes into greater detail about the methods by which academics long attempted to dismiss women writers, whether because of genre, relationships with other men, outright falsehoods (did you all know that Charlotte Brontë wrote only one book? Villette and others clearly don't exist), and a pervasive self-fulfilling prophecy about what qualifies as literature.

Do men and women really write differently?

One of our great claims in the fight against literary sexism is that there is no difference between the writing of a man and the writing of a woman. I have even gone so far as to sarcastically suggest that perhaps "men's upper body strength makes them better suited to describing dew drops on a leaf". On the other hand, we argue that women need to be better represented, because they provide us with dimensions that are otherwise unavailable.

Reconciling these two seemingly contradictory claims is surprisingly easy, and apparently critical in this discussion when responding to angry cries about imposed equality.

On the surface, on a purely technical level, when it comes down to letters and words: men and women write the same. There is no difference between when a man writes the sentence "and he slowly lifted his head to behold the sky" versus when a woman writes "and his eyes rose upwards, beholding the sky". Readers cannot actually recognize the gender of an author based on excerpts, and writing as a concept has no gender bias.

But writing as a construct does.

Let me be clear: there are differences between men and women, but these differences are not neatly divided, nor are they explicitly defined. It's much more accurate to look at a spectrum, in which almost everyone crosses the so-called gender lines. This is true of literature as well, in as much as there are certain "traits" that are more commonly interesting and relevant to women, while other fields are more traditionally associated with men, yet neither of these is ever actually exclusive. I'll also point out that while I am writing about gender as something strictly binary, I understand that many do not define themselves in this way.

Today, marketing for traditionally male genres (such as a sci-fi) is occasionally done with an eye for male readers (occasionally), yet it is understood and accepted (and expected) that women will move beyond the marketing to pick up the books. Meanwhile, women writers are ghettoized in their "own" genre ("Women's fiction"). Women are expected to read broadly, by both men and women writers (if they don't, they are haughtily called misandrists), while men can easily read only books by white men (and just be called: sticking to the "canon"). This odd dynamic is important for several reasons which will be discussed a bit later.

These are ultimately marketing choices, but we cannot separate marketing from the larger culture surrounding it. We do not live and do not read within a vacuum. A culture that largely supports men while finding women to be "the exception" will not suddenly embrace books by women. To deny the background sexism that fills our culture and our world is to simply close one's eyes. All of the sexism that we see in literature exists in exactly the same format in film, television, business, science, and just about every other aspect of our society. This means that a great part of the difference between men and women's writing is entirely in how we package our books and ideas. To rephrase the most common and sharply on-point example of this: When a woman writes about the family and home life, she is writing niche. When a man writes about family, it's universal. Another fine example: Women write romances, men write dramas.

Yet we are still left wondering - what is the real difference? Is it all constructed, all society-based, all in our heads? The answer is unequivocally no. If it were the case, there really would be no difference if men were writing or women were writing. The fact that we care, the fact that we fight for this, the fact that we demand this equality is a strong indicator that some distinction exists.

That distinction is different experiences.

Men and women experience the world differently, socially and biologically. Our hormones ultimately determine our emotions, our reactions, our behaviors, and our experiences. To take the most glaringly obvious example, childbirth is an entirely different experience for men than it is for women. These are experiences that shape people, and all of that influences writing. Literature is, after all, deeply personal. The differences between men and women are enough to explain why a balance is needed between the two.

What then is literature?

We have concluded that there are certain differences between men and women, and also that there are bigger issues with our culture surrounding those issues. Some of it has to do with dismissing women's experiences as trivial (for example women writing about raising children is pedantic, or women writing about sexual violence is feminist-niche), but much of it has to do with a long, long history of, as Russ puts it, "suppressing" women's writing. A more accurate description would be, I think, "dismissing" women's writing.

As established earlier, women have always written literature. The very first novel was written by a woman - and a Japanese woman at that. Women have always had important roles in history and culture, yet when looking over lists of "classics" - lists which serve as the basis for many peoples' reading choices - you see that women writers have only recently begun making their way onto these lists, and in my experience rarely comprise of more than 25% (and that 25% is only achieved if nearly every single one of Jane Austen's novels are included...). Furthermore, while you'll see plenty of non-Anglo-American men on these lists (Tolstoy, Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Dumas, Goethe, I can go on...), you will rarely if ever see women in translation (particularly on Anglo-American lists).

These lists reflect what the literary perception of the "canon" is at this time. This is because the concept of the canon is entirely subjective - fluid, changing and terribly defined. Some lists include Emile Zola and George Eliot, others include Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie, others have already opened their gates to J. K. Rowling and Halldor Laxness. The lists are eclectic, often entirely dependent on the country of origin and ultimately do little more than shed light on, again, what we perceive is the canon.

And right now, we perceive that canon as almost exclusively male. We perceive literature through the filter of male experiences and through centuries of defining art in the context of men. We can't ignore that, we can't disconnect that, and we can't pretend like it doesn't affect us. As a result, women have been systematically weeded out of our literary history (Marguerite de Navarre, Murasaki Shikibu, Grazia Deledda, Juana Inés de la Cruz, to name but a few).

When I was fourteen, I decided that I needed to read more "classics", to start reading like a grown-up. It didn't seem strange to me that I preferred for people to see that I was reading War and Peace as opposed to Sense and Sensibility, nor did it strike me as odd that I automatically rated those typical canon classics as more "serious" than those few books written by women that had been lucky enough to get published under the moniker of "classic".

It has taken me many years to reach this point where I can recognize how the canon has shaped my reading. It has taught me that certain experiences are worth more than others. It has taught me that there is an "objective" metric of literature, and how to define good books according to it. It has taught me which books are serious and which frivolous (this largely supported by literary journals, reviews, reviewers and publisher attitudes).

So it is no surprise that the year is 2014, and I am only just realizing that I have been letting other people determine for me what is a good book.

Bring on the pitchforks: Philip Roth is not a good author, but Hilary Mantel is. Javier Marías's The Infatuations is a pleasant enough book, but Yoko Ogawa's Revenge is simply stunning. Young-Ha Kim got all the attention at the London Book Fair, but Sun-mi Hwang blows him out of the water without a backwards glance. Everyone has by now heard of Knausgård, but who knows of his talented compatriot Merethe Lindstrøm? We know Roberto Bolaño, but what of Carla Guelfenbein?

Responses, denial, and why it's important

The above will have rankled some of you. Some will argue that the male writers I have listed here are actually some of the very best, and others will argue that the women here are clearly subpar. These are discussions we will always have and should have. Swap out each of the women's names with those of other men, and we'd have the exact same argument. It's one based on literary tastes and styles and personal opinions. This is great; this is what literary criticism is all about.

But I chose women for a reason. That's because as much as many people would like to close their eyes and plug their ears, there is a clear, glaring problem in publishing right now. And that problem is not the lack of women writers in translation (though that is without a doubt a problem). No.

The problem is the flat-out denial from most publishers. Denial, mixed with sexism, and a hefty dose of elitism.

In today's internet connected age, I can - in 140 characters - link to a review of a book I read, share it with the publisher, and within minutes have it shared to all of their followers. This happens. Constantly. But in today's internet connected age, I can get only one publisher to respond to my queries about the lack of women writers in translation, and that response is condescending, rude and sexist to its core.

So pay close attention, because these are the publisher responses I've gotten to this project:

1. Nothing
2. Sexist rant
3. Nothing
4. Nothing
5. Nothing

I have been dismissed for writing under a pen name, dismissed for being a feminist, dismissed for focusing on women's writing, accused of wanting to impose quotas, haughtily informed that this publisher is aware of their abysmal track record when it comes to publishing women writers, and finally told, and I quote directly (though obviously somewhat out of context): "The press has a particular aesthetic that determines what gets published, and that aesthetic may in fact be practiced by more men than women." And all this in the single email response that a publisher deigned to send me.

At this point, I will praise the wonderful response from And Other Stories. After my tweet to them about the project, they acknowledged their gender imbalance in translation and have made real efforts to improve their catalog. This is the sort of publisher response we deserve.

No more

So this is where we stand. Armed with the understanding that a problem exists and ready (I hope) to do something about it, the inevitable question remains: What can we do?

We do this. We discuss.

We do not boycott these small, independent publishers because of their imbalance, but we make our voices heard. We do not point fingers (even when we'd like to), but we hope that by discussing the problems, they might understand them as well. We do not scream, but we shout. We do not kick, but we fight.

We do not impose, but we ask. We do not demand, but we challenge.

We do not pretend like this issue is black and white, or like it is the only battle. We do not act as though it's the simplest matter in the world, or that the solution we think is obvious will work for everyone. We do not belittle, we do not simplify, we do not dismiss. But we say, "No more."

Women in translation | Responses

In the wake of my post from a couple weeks ago about the dismal percentage of women writers who have been translated into English, I cannot in good conscience leave the matter alone. It's not done. My post was meant not to throw the observations to the wind, but to search for answers and make sure that the playing field starts to change.

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who was involved in the conversation: everyone from bloggers, to translators, to publishers play an important role in finding the source of the problem and rectifying it. Without your insights and thoughts, this really would have just floated away, never to be mentioned again. We've already taken the first steps. Now we continue.

Here on the blog and over on Twitter, a few theories arose as to why the stats look the way they do. Tony Malone of Tony's Reading List suggested that perhaps men are perceived as writing better "literature" than women, hinging on the fact that books in translation are often of a more "literary" nature. After a short debate over the use of the word "perceived" (in which I would argue that using such a claim only further implies actual, active sexism...), Tony also rightly pointed out the sad notion that while women will gladly read books by men, men are somewhat less willing to read a book written by a woman, and that perhaps publishers are merely "hedging their bets".

Meanwhile, Meike Ziervogel of Peirene Press provided a publisher's view on the matter. She argued that women are simply not writing the type of Literature that Peirene, for example, want to publish, adding that women write more "genre" and less "literary fiction", and that their technique is often "not up to scratch" as compared with men. While I greatly appreciate her perspective on the matter, I'm not sure I agree with it. At all. To start with, I struggle with the definition of "literary fiction" Meike seems to be using, especially the idea that books should not form a type of escape. While we clearly have different ideas on art, its power and what even qualifies, what troubles me more is Meike's perception (again that word!) that women lack the technical talents male writers have.

This is a problematic idea for several reasons. One, there is no logical basis for it. Writing is in no way something biologically influenced - it's not as though because of their better upper body strength, men will obviously be better able to describe dewdrops on a leaf. More than that, however, is the fact that it's an extraordinarily unfair and broad generalization of both men and women's writing styles. I will not pretend to have ever read books with the same type of scouting eye that Meike must, but I have read a lot of books in my short lifetime. Usually, the only differences between writing styles stem from the very type of book itself. Does Hilary Mantel's writing lack technique? Obviously not. Does Marie NDiaye's odd writing sound like a woman or like a writer experimenting with a different style? Definitely the latter. Does Alice Munro's actual writing sound like a woman wrote it? Nope, though the topics may be viewed as more domestic and as such "effeminate" (an assessment I thoroughly disagree with, by the way).

In both Meike and Tony's comments, a certain subtext appears - that women are not writing the type of Literary and Important and Quality books that these publishers are seeking. I take particular offence at this. Besides the fact that I don't believe it (basing myself mostly off of Hebrew, where women are just as likely to produce quality Literature as men, yet significantly less likely to get translated - as we saw, no Israeli women were translated in 2013), I think it shows a greater problem with literary elitism. I don't want to get into that argument today, but if this remains the last hurdle to cross before women are properly represented in literature in translation, I will happily tear it down.

Michelle Bailat-Jones (of pieces fame) linked to a brilliant article which I wish I could have seen before writing my own paltry post: Alison Anderson's Words Without Borders article which is exactly about this lack of women in translation. Yet this article raises a point I failed to mention in my own post - the strikingly low percentage of women to be recognized by the various translations awards (to be discussed more in the next follow-up post).

Michelle and T. Olmstead (of BookSexy Review) went on to discuss what might be the source of the imbalance. Michelle pointed out that most of the books she had received in 2012 for review from publishers (unsolicited or pitched) were written by men, while she had been forced to specifically request books written by women. 2013 might emerge with better statistics (indeed, Michelle felt confident that it would), but based on the broader numbers, I am somehow skeptical that it will be a perfect split at the end. Based on other comments I've seen and my own observations of the literature-in-translation blogosphere, publishers sending more books by male authors might just be a trend. More statistics are needed before we can really point fingers - I would greatly appreciate more insight from other bloggers and reviewers who receive books for review directly from publishers.

The next stage comes in several parts, asking help from across the board. But we'll be looking at that in the next follow-up post, hopefully in the coming weeks. Brace yourselves: we've got a long way to go.

Review | And the Mountains Echoed

I had only a few distracted hours separating between Between Friends and And the Mountains Echoed. It was an abrupt and rather unpleasant transition from Amos Oz's blunt, at times cold writing style to Khaled Hosseini's beautiful, emotion-steeped approach. But to Hosseini's credit, the discomfort quickly faded, and as had happened with his two earlier novels, I soon found myself oblivious to all but the book.

And the Mountains Echoed is fairly good book. I hesitate to call it much more than that, because though I enjoyed it and though I sped through it and though I think Hosseini's writing is excellent and though the story has lingered in my mind the past couple of weeks since I finished it... it's a bit problematic. Structurally speaking it's a complicated book, and in terms of writing it has its stumbles, and there were some issues with the pacing and even a smidgen with the characters. Shall we dissect?

When it comes to its structure, And the Mountains Echoed opts for that oh-so-popular "literary fiction" choice of having a bigger story told through seemingly unrelated (but obviously related) shorter pieces. And the Mountains Echoed is less roundabout in its use of this style (it's obvious from the very start that the stories fit together in terms of characters and story, if not chronology), but it does use various characters to access similar stories from all sorts of angles. This is not my favorite storytelling style, to say the least, but at least it works okay in the book, in large part because of the time jumps Hosseini opts for. The story is linear-not-linear, unfolding in the same way along different threads.

And the Mountains Echoed's strength is in its use of emotions. This is Hosseini's go-to trick, even more than his clear writing. How can our hearts not twinge at watching our characters get torn away from each other, and the twists and turns their lives take until they can, perhaps, hopefully, be united? How can we not feel while reading of loyalty and love, of friendship and family? And the Mountain's Echoed may not have the most clearly defined characters and maybe its story twists a bit too much, but beautiful writing and tugged-at-heartstrings make the book a worthwhile read.

There are some more problems. The non-linear style makes the book uneven, as we try to figure out how each story fits into the larger whole. Some of them are obvious continuations of each other. Others have only thin threads that connect them, but their overall value - their message, their emotional punch, their clear implications on the world at large - makes them worth it. But there are a few that felt weakly attached and too in-your-face with their messaging. Instead of the story flowing seamlessly from one angle to the next, we're forced to make a couple "eye opening" pit stops that really only emphasize the disconnect between the messages Hosseini (perhaps rightly) wants to convey and the natural course of the stories. This also influences the pacing, making the book feel a bit slower and clunkier than it really ought to be, even as the overall impression is one of a clean, flowing novel.

And yet. Come novel's end, I had to completely disengage myself. In the two weeks since I've finished it, I've come back to think over some of its finer moments again, and wonder at its weaker ones. The stories have not slipped my mind, the characters (though not always fully realized) have retained themselves remarkably well, and though I don't feel as though And the Mountains Echoed hit me quite as strongly as Hosseini's earlier A Thousand Splendid Suns did, it's a surprisingly accomplished and rewarding read. Though there will no doubt be readers who dislike the structure even more than I did, and find the characterization wanting, And the Mountains Echoed is a good book, one I can comfortably recommend to many readers.

Review | Between Friends

Between Friends... between friends

Readers may recall a few months ago I read Amos Oz's The Black Box, saying that I was debating between reading that book and... this one - Between Friends (בין חברים). Reading The Black Box was a thoroughly interesting, but also somewhat uncomfortable feeling. I wanted to recommend the book, but I didn't like it. I was fascinated by it, but I hadn't enjoyed it at all. And I knew that it wasn't like Scenes from Village Life, which I had really enjoyed.

Between Friends is in some ways much more like Scenes from Village Life than The Black Box. This is mostly because of its format - like Oz's earlier book, Between Friends is a collection of short stories about a certain place, where characters appear and reappear throughout, and where the location is more of a main character than anyone else. Scenes from Village Life used a level of distance to tell a story about modern Israeli life; Between Friends goes back in time to the kibbutz of the fifties.

But here Between Friends finds a major similarity with The Black Box. Unlike Scenes from Village Life which had some perfectly crafted stories and characters I immediately felt connected with, Between Friends is filled with utterly unsympathetic characters in frustrating situations. The stories made me feel thoroughly uncomfortable; I honestly didn't want to spend much more time with this kibbutz and its inhabitants. But I did, because despite its rougher edges, Oz's writing is compelling and compulsively engaging. As always, his writing is distinctly "not-beautiful", but... it's worth reading.

The historical setting of this one sets it apart from either of Oz's previous novels that I've read. Between Friends takes advantage of the shadow of the Israeli War of Independence, in regards to the political situation in Israel as well as its socioeconomic situation. Oz uses his foresight as a modern author to play with the concept of the kibbutzim's socialism, through the prophecies of a dedicated founder of the kibbutz, or the hard-line beliefs of one of its prominent members, or the casual acknowledgement of its changing future from its young-generation secretary. Oz uses his distance to gently emphasize the future that is to come, but oddly enough he casts no judgement one way or the other. Oz's voice is usually a dry, almost dead tone behind his characters; this time he seemed even more unresponsive than usual.

I can't help but compare Between Friends to both The Black Box and Scenes from Village Life. In structure, it is similar to the latter; in my tepid but intrigued response to it, it is much more like The Black Box, except I think I got more from The Black Box than I did from Between Friends, which felt a bit like a weak imitation of Scenes from Village Life for me. It can work as an introduction to Oz, certainly, and it's not a bad book by any means. But it's not particularly likable either, as accomplished as it may be. In other words... it's a book by Amos Oz. Difficult to classify, but recommended reading.

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Finally, a minor quibble. When I first saw the translated title on the inside cover of the Hebrew edition*, my immediate instinct was to correct what I felt was a bad translation. I hoped it was a temporary title. Now that I realize that Between Friends is indeed the final title, I'll only mention as a side-note that I personally would have translated the title as Among Friends - like many Israeli titles, there's an air of ambiguity to the original Hebrew. But this is entirely irrelevant.

* Hebrew books almost always (always) have an English version of the title inside. This isn't always the actual title once (if) the book is translated into English, but it often is.

Ireland, in bookstores

So Marie (the Boston Bibliophile) kindly requested I post about my recent trip to Ireland. Simply put: it was fun. But more than the vacation itself, I had the opportunity to visit a few Irish bookstores, get some bookmarks, and experience the general Irish bookish-ness. A nice vacation, in other words.

Unsurprisingly, the big chain Eason was the most common bookstore (that I saw), and to be honest it was fairly disappointing in all its forms. Big and shiny like the best of them, the collections were fairly limited, predictable and oddly American*. The only interesting aspect in the Eason stores I encountered was their support of Sony Readers - a rare sight indeed.

Next up was Dubray, which was a significant improvement. Also a chain, Dubray actually had a lot of books (and much less noise) as compared to Eason. I visited one in Dublin and one in Galway, and both impressed me with the amount of books they managed to fit into their relatively smaller space. The Galway one (where I spent significantly more time) also had a dedicated Irish fiction bookcase that went beyond the expected hits and included several poetry collections and independently published Irish books. And though their fiction section was very Anglo-centric (little translated literature, a lot of American books), their sci-fi/fantasy section was overflowing with classics and newer titles. Quite impressive.

Lastly, I had hoped to visit the recommended Kennys Books (also in Galway). What ended up happening, however, was that I noticed a young man (reading a graphic novel, by the way - V for Vendetta, I believe? I might be mis-remembering) wearing a sign with an arrow towards Charlie Byrne's Bookshop. I followed it rather on a whim, and discovered one of those rare, astonishing bookstores. We're talking big collection - an incredibly packed bookcase lining the outer wall of the store, as well as shelves upon shelves of used and new books inside. The staff recommendations shelf came as a particular surprise, containing all sorts of unexpected and exciting books - I picked up a Peirene novella off the shelf, and in addition to my used purchases, I also snagged a new, ridiculously cheap copy of Matterhorn. I spent a long time in the store, and could have easily kept browsing for several more hours. I never did make it to Kennys (I had apparently used up my "bookstore quota" for the vacation. As if.). Next time, I suppose. But I'll definitely be returning to Charlie Byrne's as well.

As for bookmarks: I got extraordinarily lucky this trip. Rather than hunting down tacky souvenir bookmarks for purchase, lovely bookmarks kept finding me - I got two handmade bookmarks at the Celtic and Prehistoric Museum in Dingle, as well as a couple gifts from family friends. All in all, a successfully trip, both for the traveling itself and the general book buying and book appreciation. Too bad I hardly got any reading done.

* Though for the most part I'm referring to books originating in the U.S., American in this case also includes Canada... yes, I am well aware of how inaccurate a name it is.