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 21 | Island of Shattered Dreams by Chantal T. Spitz | Review

I first heard of Chantal T. Spitz at the wonderful, inaugural Translating Women conference last year. Spitz's English-language translator Jean Anderson presented a paper about cross-cultural literature, representing Pacific literature in a way that I had never before heard. I'm not in the literary field, after all, and the Translating Women conference was my first experience attending a literary academic-style conference; I've attended other literary events and plenty of scientific conferences, but nothing like this. For me, Anderson's presentation was one of the most fascinating and memorable of the conference as a whole. In the course of the talk, she discussed Spitz (as well as other, untranslated writers), and I jotted down in my notes "French is 'not her language', but the language she writes in due to school and education". Moreover, I was fascinated by the idea of exploring Tahitian and Pacific literature, since these are regions of the world I know very little about. I ultimately ordered Island of Shattered Dreams a few months later and read it just at the onset of August.

It would be unfair to say that I devoured Island of Shattered Dreams in one rapturous swell, though I did. It would also be unfair to say that I've been thinking about the short novel extensively since finishing reading it, though I have. These both feel unfair because they don't do enough to emphasize just how strongly Island of Shattered Dreams made me feel, nor how strongly I feel that more readers should be seeking this translation out. From a technical standpoint, Island of Shattered Dreams manages to do so much in so few pages (157), and with an extraordinary balance. Poetry, lyricism, history, politics, and romance all intertwine to form a tiny epic that never feels incomplete. Simply saying "oh, this book is wonderful!" or "I couldn't put it down!" seems like underselling.

The novel - which carries with it a unique meta-context that becomes more apparent and important by the story's end, which I won't get into because I quite enjoyed how it unfolded - follows an Indigenous Tahitian family, initially focused on Tematua and his great love Emere (whose mother is Indigenous and father a white Englishman), later shifting focus to their children: Terii, Eritapeta, and Tetiare. The fluid passage of time is beautifully framed by Tematua: "As Tematua foresaw in his heart, time is rushing out of control", precisely at the cusp of the novel's focus change. Island of Shattered Dreams covers a significant portion of the 20th century without it feeling like an overly drawn out narrative, and the tight family saga means that the novel's overall flow is never impeded. 

Yet this very sentence I just quoted also defines a second, critical theme in Island of Shattered Dreams, since the quote does not end where I stopped it. The full quote is actually "As Tematua foresaw in his heart, time is rushing out of control, troubling people's minds and surreptitiously filling their hearts with shame for the Mā’ohi world and admiration for the pale reflections of the foreigners' world." Ultimately, Island of Shattered Dreams must also be read as a novel about Tahiti/French Polynesia at large: its cultural shifts, its status as an island outpost for a massive colonial power, and various racial/cultural complexities that come attached with both. 

Emere's story is particularly central in this, as she is the not only the product of a mixed-race relationship, she is also caught between cultures and the love both of her parents have for her in that context. Her mother Toofa "hadn't prepared her daughter for the difficulties of life on the outlying islands. She had wanted an easy, modern lifestyle for her, hoping that the man who married her would provide her with a housekeeper and every comfort." Toofa remains rooted to joining the white, Western world (which goes on to influence her grandchildren too), yet accepts Emere's choice leave this society behind and marry Tematua. It's a balance that ripples throughout the remainder of the novel, a reminder of the family's complex history and one that shapes the drama in the book's final chapters.

It's impossible for me to ignore how much I learned from Island of Shattered Dreams. Learning from literature is obviously wonderful and part of the point, but I can't help but feel disheartened by how much I end up relying on fiction to teach me things that I probably should have known earlier. I knew absolutely nothing about French Polynesia or Tahiti prior to reading Island of Shattered Dreams; it's just about exactly on the opposite side of the world from my own home and with no shared language, so this isn't particularly surprising. Still, I left Island of Shattered Dreams wanting to learn more about France's colonial history in the region and its power today. Much like the anthology Indigenous Literatures of Micronesia left me hungry to learn and read other books, so too does Island of Shattered Dreams make me wonder about the island today (Island of Shattered Dreams was published in 1991, which makes it as old as I am, aka not exactly young anymore...). What does Tahitian literature look like today? Will any more of it get translated into English? Spitz's other works are themselves still unavailable in English translation - are these also to remain out of grasp for English-language readers?

And I'm left with more questions, hearkening back to Spitz's remark about writing in French. There are several Mā’ohi words and phrases throughout the novel and Spitz even opens her novel in Mā’ohi. Spitz has already made her words "more accessible" to Western readers by writing them in the colonial French, a language that is bountifully translated from across the world. Yet Island of Shattered Dreams does not appear to have been translated between most languages. It is certainly not available in my native Hebrew, nor, to the best of my Googling, does it appear to have been translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, or Japanese. Why not? The supposed language barrier (had Spitz written her work entirely in Mā’ohi)  has been "helpfully" removed by the author herself. What more is needed?

I've written all these words without getting to the heart of my response to Island of Shattered Dreams which is, quite simply, that I loved it. I loved the writing. I loved the fluidity. I loved the poetry. I loved the warmth with which Spitz describes her world and life, new-to-me yet so far from being new (and it never feels like an introduction, it feels like... life). Most importantly, I loved the love that is central to so very much of the novel. To use what Anderson explains in her translator note as a Mā’ohi cultural touchstone which I was obviously unfamiliar with until reading the book, I felt Island of Shattered Dreams deep within my belly, that place from which emotions truly do rise (even if this is not how it's usually described in either of my languages). I could not set this book aside for a moment, sitting outside to read under a perfect summer sky, drinking in the book from when the morning air was still cool until the hot noonday sun reached my reading nook. Alongside all of the rest that makes it a valuable work, Island of Shattered Dreams is a beautiful story brimming with all sorts of different forms of love and a love of storytelling (once oral, now put to print) at its very core. How could I not fall in love myself?

WITMonth Day 20 | Opportunity, not obligation | Video

I've seen some posts lately that have made me want to remind everyone that WITMonth is an opportunity to boost and support women writers in translation, not any sort of obligation as a reader, blogger, reviewer, etc. And this opportunity isn't just limited to August, either!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hey everyone! So we're 2/3s of the way through August and I wanted to check in on a very specific topic and talk about opportunity, not obligation. So basically, as WITMonth has grown from year to year, there are more and more people getting involved which is amazing and wonderful and so exciting to see, but one of the things that happens is that I'll see more people sort of getting nervous about the fact that they can't take part in WITMonth or won't be able to finish a book or review a book or post or whatever it may be. 

And I just want to remind readers that the point of WITMonth is really the engagement and it's thinking about the issue, it's thinking about the topic, it's thinking "how many books by women writers from around the world have I really read and how many of those are reflective of different languages and different cultures and different backgrounds? What can I do with my own reading?"

And that obviously involves reading books (and I really recommend reading books by women writers in translation, obviously!), but it doesn't have to mean any one specific thing, and of course, you know, #WITForever, it doesn't have to just be in August, so if you're feeling like you didn't really take part in WITMonth this year because you weren't able to read a book or write a review or take part in a readathon or whatever it may be, rest assured! You have definitely taken part. Just by watching this video, YOU are taking part in WITMonth.

I hope everyone's having an amazing time reading wonderful (and maybe less wonderful?) books and thinking about what it means to really read the world... and have a great rest of the month!

#WITMonth Day 19 | The Restless by Gerty Dambury | Review

I was not expecting The Restless to be what it was. Gerty Dambury's novel (translated from French by Judith G. Miller) somehow struck me as the sort of book I'd need to slog through, something that would be experimental in a frustrating-but-understandably-important way. I have no idea where that idea even came from or why I was initially so put off from the book. Maybe (as always...) the fault is in my own perceptions of the meta-framing - the Feminist Press cover shows a brown-shaded old-fashioned classroom, rows of empty seats. The back cover blurb leads with a little girl's concern over her teacher's disappearance. Somehow - bafflingly - I created some sort of story in mind of what The Restless would be and concluded that I would struggle to read the book. Oh, how wrong I was.

I positively devoured The Restless. 

At 237 pages, The Restless is neither a short nor particularly long book, but it's somehow massive and brisk at the same time. The best word I can think to describe it is "crackling". And okay, maybe part of my association with that word is because I accidentally got the book wet a year back when I bought it and it dried in such a way that the spine crackles whenever you flip the pages, but goodness if it doesn't apply to the inside as well. The Restless is indeed experimental in a lot of senses, using an honestly pretty strange quadrille framing technique, with alternating narration and constant perspective shifts. That most of the narrators are dead is definitely another weird factor, but my goodness it works. There's so much about this novel that could go wrong, and yet it all works so well.

At the center of The Restless is Émilienne, the young girl "struggling with the sudden disappearance of her teacher and father", per the cover description. Émilienne defines the novel through her insistence on sitting outside of her house, waiting for her father to return home. Her older siblings look on with worry and fear, narrating the dance that outlines the novel as a whole. Émilienne tells her story in bits, but is also in the process of an abstract conversation with dead neighbors and semi-strangers, characters whose lives intertwine or at times barely brush each other. The dead constantly jostle each for their stage, arguing in little asides and scenes. Together, this mish-mash of different characters tells the story of several pivotal days in Guadeloupe's history, starting from a worker's strike and leading into widespread rioting and violence in May 1967. Thus alongside the story of Émilienne's family history and personal narrative arc (and oh, I do so love a good childhood arc!), Dambury paints a striking portrait of Guadeloupe as a complex whole.

These different threads frequently tug at each other, but the balance is shockingly good. Dambury has the rare ability to pack her story with dozens of characters and plot pieces and keep things tight. The Restless never feels like it's unsure of where it's going or what the point of the novel is. There's always that crackle, something tense and fully confident, both in the writing and the plotting itself. The writing never lets you forget that this book is telling a wide story that is at the same time fully focused on Émilienne. It's relentless. It's excellent.

The Restless has, unfortunately, not gotten very much attention in English, nor has its author. As of publishing this review, Gerty Dambury does not have a Wikipedia page in English and The Restless appears to be her only work translated into English. Dambury, it turns out, is predominantly a playwright, and it occurs me now that this may explain The Restless's pacing, tension, and excellent storytelling balance. I would absolutely love to read/experience more of Dambury's writing, but in the meantime I'd be satisfied to see her gain a wider audience in English through The Restless. A wonderful, special book that I'm so glad I ended up reading.

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 17 | A Kitchen in the Corner of the House by Ambai | Review

 It's an odd thing to retroactively compare a book to another that you read later, and yet this is what happened to me with Ambai's A Kitchen in the Corner of the House (tr. from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmström). Not long after reading this collection of short stories, I read the multi-author collection Spark of Light: Short Stories by Women Writers of Odisha. In essence, there is very little that connects these two books other than the fact that they are both short story collections by Indian women writers, except of course we need to remember that Tamil and Odia are two completely different languages representing completely different parts of India (which, you know, is huge), they don't even belong to the same language family. Perhaps I would have had the same feeling had I read a short story collection from China or Senegal or Haiti as well. Either way, reading Spark of Light seemed to cement some of my struggles with A Kitchen in the Corner of the House. And I did ultimately struggle with this one quite a bit, even as I recognized a lot of good in it as well.

I'll start with the positives: I loved some of the stories in this collection. I loved the cool writing style. I loved many of the journey stories. I loved how Ambai centered her stories around women's experiences in many different ways. There are some fiercely feminist stories in this collection, as well as stories that reflect changing cultures and societies. As one of the back-cover blurbs note, Ambai does a brilliant job of conveying women's anger in the face of injustice. There's a lot to appreciate here.

The problems begin when judging the book as a whole. First, like many collections, A Kitchen in the Corner of the House doesn't find a very good balance between stories sounding individual enough to stand out and stories flowing together. Short story collections are so often frustrating for this reason, with stories either sounding too similar or too apart. At first, I thought that Kitchen... did a pretty decent job of this balance, but the stories and characters began to blur as I got deeper into the book. This was one of the early points of contrast I found with Spark of Light; that collection is comprised of short stories by different authors and their individual voices carried the book admirably. Kitchen... started to lose me around halfway through, with stories that felt narratively repetitive (if not actually on a plot level). 

The next problem was another retroactive contrast with Spark of Light: the story topics themselves. There are several parallels in terms of stories conveying women's domestic/personal struggles in both collections, but Ambai's oddly seemed less consequential. Ambai's stories are often experimental or slightly shifted in terms of their narrative frame, which leads some to end abruptly or never quite reach their point. I can understand the literary value behind this, but it ends up creating a collection that's much less satisfying than it could be. Many of the stories hover around certain themes without fully landing on them, and this too led me to feel like Kitchen... was somewhat incomplete. The clean lines and conclusions of Spark of Light - which also includes some more experimental stories, yes? - felt like a sharp contrast.

But the biggest problem I had with Kitchen... was ultimately in its lack of context. I have long argued and will continue to argue that readers do not need to be spoonfed when it comes to books from cultures or backgrounds that are different from their own. Moreover, who's to decide whether something is new or unfamiliar to a certain reader, right? I may be unfamiliar with Indian literary traditions, history, religion, or myths, but that doesn't mean that every reader is. Except... except that in translation, the point is often that a book is being brought across different cultures where the reader can't be expected to understand everything. 

And so A Kitchen in the Corner of the House has basically no context beyond the literal text. There is no introduction, there is no afterword, there are no translator notes, there are no footnotes, and even the author biography is not exactly extensive. For a book that includes so many regional, linguistic, and cultural references, this felt like a huge oversight. I tried to supplement what I could through Wikipedia, but this felt like a classic example where a well-written introduction regarding Ambai's writing style, feminism, and academic approach would have hugely benefited the book as a whole. Even just a brief afterword may have tied the collection together a bit better, giving some degree of context to the stories. Worst of all, rather than wanting to read/learn more, I felt like Kitchen... existed in some sort of isolated dimension that didn't invite greater interest. Something critical was missing. 

I came away from the book feeling a little baffled and unhappy. As I already noted, some of the stories were great - memorable, strong writing, powerful in their perspective - but others seemed to float in and out of my consciousness. I ended up skimming quite a few that just weren't doing it for me. And no matter how much I wanted to understand the collection, I felt like I wasn't fully able to, and that kept me from fully appreciating it too. Is it possible that other, more clever readers will understand A Kitchen in the Corner of the House without any sort of extensive introduction or spoonfeeding? Sure, it's possible. But it still feels like a missed opportunity and something that should be an option for the book, even as an external supplement. It still feels like the book - as a whole - just wasn't complete in a lot of ways, not in its context, not in its flow between stories, and not in its own overarching message. I ultimately liked A Kitchen in the Corner of the House, I can rank it as a decently good read and recommend it to some readers. But it's not an easy recommendation. And even with the positives, I find myself somewhat disappointed.

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 15 | Kuessipan by Naomi Fontaine | Review

I rarely remember how a book gets on my radar, but when I find a small gem that doesn't seem to have gotten much attention, I find myself wishing I could remember who deserves that credit. How did I first hear of Naomi Fontaine, a French-Canadian First Nations writer? What made me look up Kuessipan (tr. from French by David Homel)? What eventually led me to actually buy it? Even though it was all within the past year or so, I no longer remember.

Yet I'm grateful to whoever it was, dear anonymous reader. Kuessipan is a tiny book that I could easily have not connected with, and I wonder if I was almost expecting to not enjoy it. I have often found myself struggling to enjoy vignette-style novellas, feeling as though they're neither the style of poetry that I typically like nor fiction-y enough. Kuessipan was teed up for my disappointment, and yet. And yet! I liked it a lot.

Part of what worked, I think, was that I ended up reading Kuessipan as an almost wholly poetic book. Not poetry, but poetic. Something in its rhythm didn't feel like it was trying to build a structured narrative, nor was it especially loose. Each vignette felt well and intentionally crafted, with care and detail. The pieces flowed into each other naturally. The book - generally speaking - flowed, and this perhaps is also what made it feel so much more poetic than a standard novella. 

There's a part of me that also wonders if Kuessipan simply doesn't feel more consequential than the average vignette-style novella. Stark, clean writing isn't a rarity for novellas (isn't it kind of the point?), nor is plotlessness with powerful resonance, but I feel most novellas don't really manage to tell an epic in such sparsity. Fontaine's writing covers so much and so many in a way that makes it feel like a much longer book than it really is (and it really is tiny, barely 99 pages). Part of Kuessipan is a coming-of-age story, part is a cultural history, part is a contemporary snapshot, and yet these different pieces fit together smoothly. Fontaine includes many different pieces of Innu life (based on her own experiences, I have to assume), whether in describing community life or traditional history. Some are painful - substance abuse is a recurring theme - and others almost wistful, casting their eye toward things like salmon fishing or hunting or nomadic wandering. Fontaine writes of young motherhood, childhood, and leaving home with the same sensitivity as in describing death, old age, or memory. 

Kuessipan does not feel like a linear work. As I write this review, I find myself flipping back through different vignettes and segments. The poetic nature of the writing means that these don't feel out of place in any order, even though I quite liked how things fit together and grew when read in sequence. But something about the out-of-time nature of the work makes it feel like it has a slightly longer impact. Novellas and poetry can often get lost in one's memory, if only because the power is in the emotional response. Kuessipan certainly doesn't feel like it has the strongest plot-based hook, but the clarity of its writing and storytelling is remarkably memorable. Even without clinging to specific phrases or segments, I have found myself thinking about the book quite a bit in the months since I read it. Kuessipan is yet another in a long line of books that deserves far more attention than its received. I - for my part - eagerly await the opportunity to read more of Fontaine's writing in English translation in the near future.

WITMonth Day 14 | How to find books by women writers in translation

Last week, I wrote about accessibility and availability for books by women writers in translation. There, I mostly focused on the sorts of barriers that prevent works in translation - and especially works by women writers in translation - from getting into the hands of many readers. But one of the things that I didn't really address was the question of discovery. Of course the question of literal availability is huge in ensuring that books reach readers, but how are readers supposed to know about these books in the first place?

I've heard a lot about this over the past few years, especially as WITMonth has grown. Twitter, Instagram, and Booktube are full of readers who are exposed to the women in translation project through someone else's passionate involvement, and then begins their own journey of reading more books by women writers in translation. One of the most common first steps is trying to find that initial path in: What books even qualify? Who are the women writers in translation that are available? How do you find them?

It's not trivial. Like with almost every "minority" in literary publishing, the problem isn't that the books don't exist or can't exist, but that they're not given nearly the same space, attention, marketing, and fame as the straight, white, Anglo "default". Things like bookstore or library displays go a long way in exposing readers to new books. Things like Buzzfeed lists and viral recommendation threads also do a lot. 

But let's say you're new to this. You're not on Twitter, you're not on Instagram, and you mostly do your bookshopping at major chains or online outlets. Where, you may ask, are the women writers in translation? Here are some ways to find the very most popular women writers in translation:

1. Look over the 100 Best WIT! Yes, some shameless self-promotion here, but this list was crowdfunded by a couple hundred folks from around the world and reflect some of the most popular contemporary titles in the world of literary translation.
2. Check out some of the heavy-hitter publishers in terms of popular books by women in translation. Europa Editions, for example, has published some of the most best-selling WIT in recent history, including Elena Ferrante, Muriel Barbery, and Mieko Kawakami. While not all publishers of popular women writers in translation necessarily publish a lot, many do.
3. Use Goodreads for groups and lists of books by women in translation! There are all sorts of different options which can help a newer reader find appropriate books.
4. Follow sites like Book Riot and LitHub, which both occasionally feature works by women writers in translation and have some great lists on hand.

But what about readers who are already familiar with these, as well as other, more specific blogs, sites, and outlets? What about readers seeking books from outside of Europe's dominant literary influence? What about readers seeking books from different genres or backgrounds? Well, you too have several options!

1. Always go back to the original international literature sources as well: Words Without Borders, Asymptote, Three Percent, and literary journals like Modern Poetry in Translation or Two Lines, as well as many others (of course).
2. Peruse the annual WITMonth new releases list, which I try to compile from a lot of different sources and covering a lot of different genres and literary designations.
3. Lovers of speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, and adjacent genres) are strongly advised to check out Rachel Cordasco's phenomenal SF in Translation site. While there's sadly too few WIT in speculative fiction, there are some great options on the site, as well as a really organized resource for finding reviews and such for any books you may be interested in.
4. This may, again, seem like a bit of shameless self-promotion, but check out this and last year's 50 Day Countdown(s) to WITMonth. Between the two lists, you can find literally dozens of writers from across the world, some of whom are definitely big names and others who are decidedly not!
5. And for the top-tier difficulty level, seek out the tiniest publishers of literature in translation! Academic presses, obscure poetry publishers, publishing houses from different countries (who may still publish works in your native language, whether English or otherwise!), online publishers, and so on! It can be arduous work to find women writers in translation, but there are some extraordinary gems to be found if you put that effort in.

Right now, the bottom line is this: Readers need to work to find books by women writers in translation. Despite the occasional outlier, the biggest publishing events of the year rarely promote works by women in translation and rarely give space to their voices. This is largely why WITMonth exists - August is our opportunity to loudly make this space and promote these books. At the end of the day as I've said before, the two greatest resources I can offer new readers wanting to find more women writers in translation is Twitter and Instagram. The #WITMonth tags on both sites (as well as #womenintranslation year-round!) are extraordinary resources for seeing which women writers in translation readers from all across the world are passionate about. 

And... well, there are also some projects in the works to make this whole process of finding books by women writers in translation a little easier. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

WITMonth Day 13 | The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn by Tanella Boni | Minireview

I first learned of Tanella Boni through A Rain of Words, which I finally reviewed earlier this month. Boni's poems jumped out at me enough that she was one of the authors I featured in last year's 50 Day Countdown, one of relatively few poets that I featured in the list. I don't quite remember when it was that someone (can't remember who, either, ack!) pointed out to me that a full length book of hers actually was published in English, but it immediately jumped to the top of my "must buy" list. And once I received my copy of The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn, it was pretty clearly bumped to the top of my reading list.

I read The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn in a single sitting. It's not a poetry collection, but a poetry book, that rare, single piece that fits together so very neatly and tightly that I'm not sure why there aren't more such works. (I imagine because they're so hard to pull off well?) Reading Boni's writing (translated by Todd Fredson) reminded me of reading Inger Christensen (tr. Susanna Nied), not because the styles are necessarily similar (though both have a certain thematic clarity that I think complement each other nicely), but because like Alphabet, The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn left me fairly breathless. It's the sort of breathlessness that comes from wanting to swallow the words whole, pausing, reflecting, but needing to keep reading, always needing to keep reading. Some lines biting so strongly you recoil, some lines so beautiful you can't find your next breath, all of it flowing in the best way.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I cannot review poetry. What can I say here? I loved The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn. It's one of the better single poetry books I've read in ages, ranking up there with my favorites. Not just the language, not just the structure, not just the use of breaks and pauses and recurring motifs, not just the flow, and not just the emotions. All of these things together. If I liked Boni beforehand from a sample of her poetry and knew I wanted to read more of her writing, I can now say that I want to read all of her works. I want to be able to bask in her poetry, whether individual, isolated poems or whole works like this. Whatever she's written, I want it.

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 11 | "Resilience in Immigration" by Shelly Engdau‐Vanda

Last year, I wrote about a book called "Lives of Three Generations of Bedouin Women" by a Bedouin-Israeli writer Nuzha Allassad-Alhuzail. That work of nonfiction grew out of the author's doctoral research and is a nonfiction, sociological book - very much not the sort that I typically read and review on the blog. But it sparked something in me, in terms of reading more nonfiction, and particularly reading more nonfiction by Israeli women of all sorts of different backgrounds. This quickly led me to Shelly Engdau-Vanda's "Resilience in Immigration: The Story of Ethiopian Jews in Israel", published under the same sociology series at the same publishing house. The two books are thus packaged similarly, and even something in their meta-storytelling matches - both works are by minority women in Israel, writing about communities to which they belong and experiences that broadly match their own (and sometimes very much don't).

And for me, the two books remain pillars in my understanding of different Israeli experiences and cultures. Written with the express purpose of "educating" (that is, conveying a certain sociological study), the two works are remarkably enlightening beyond just their author's demographic. Yet it is still worth mentioning that these are among the only works by Ethiopian- or Bedouin-Israeli women writers (if not the only). Not only do the books serve as a direct educational tool in their academic research, they also provide context for communities that are wholly underrepresented in Israeli literature specifically and world literature overall.

Resilience in Immigration is thus the first book by an Ethiopian-Israeli writer that I've ever read. In fact, very few works by Ethiopian-Israelis have been published in Hebrew, and few of those that have been published remain in print or are readily available. While this may seem like an offhand remark, it's actually fairly important in recognizing Resilience in Immigration's cultural context; while most Ethiopian-Israelis (and specifically those profiled in this book) have lived in Israel for over 25 years or indeed were born here, "integration" into the broader, homogeneous Israeli society has not come easy, and at times at all. Resilience in Immigration tracks the migration experience from Ethiopia through Israel, with several chapters dedicated to questions of "integration" or assimilation and associated struggles. The lack of Ethiopian-Israeli representation in broader Israeli media largely aligns with this, and the limited scope of Ethiopian-Israeli literature seems to echo this void.

The book's core is interviews with Ethiopian-Israeli adults who came to Israel as children, during Operation Moses during the 1980s. This saw thousands of Ethiopian Jewish refugees secretly airlifted to Israel through Sudan, due to persistent persecution and violence the Ethiopian Jewish community faced, as well the ongoing civil war there. Not all of Resilience in Immigration's interviewees remember this period in their life, but several could vividly recall the horrors of fleeing their homes, the Sudanese refugee camps, and the chaos surrounding the actual rescuing flights. Some had lost family. Some were separated from their families. Some experienced violence. It's not easy reading these accounts (particularly knowing that the latter part of the book goes into detail about the continuing struggles once in Israel), but it's also pivotal history that simply isn't taught in Israel. Like the best nonfiction, Resilience in Immigration made me want to read dozens more books on the subject. Unfortunately, there isn't much more out there.

In a sense, Engdau-Vanda's book is not merely the sociological study of a group of childhood survivors, but a short history of Operation Moses and its outcomes. She frequently centers the Ethiopian-Israeli community at large, alongside the individual experiences of those interviewed. This becomes important when detailing experiences with the arrival to Israel, the racial bias in how the new immigrants are treated or respected, the glaring inconsistencies in comparison with other immigration waves, and subsequent consequences. The book is organized by topic, but these naturally flow into each, starting from the harrowing journey to reach Israel through to arriving, integrating, facing racism, and the lasting effects of all of these.

My one struggle with Resilience in Immigration - like Lives of Three Generations of Bedouin Women" before it - was keeping track of those interviewed. It may seem a minor point (and it is!), but it felt necessary at times to understand who had experienced what, and in what form. This says more about my reading of the book than anything else, and is obviously not the fault of the author; one does not need to spoonfeed a reader. Otherwise, the book is sharp, tight, and eye-opening. That racism exists within Israeli society is not something that surprised me, but the pervasiveness is something that I don't think enough Israelis (even well-meaning Israelis!) fully comprehend. Nor do I think Israelis discuss enough the degree to which racist bureaucratic decision-making influences communities for decades afterward. These aren't even the express focus of Resilience in Immigration, but they're there, and impossible to ignore. (They are, I should note, also fully relevant to other experiences within the Israeli context. These too don't get enough attention.)

Which brings me back to the beginning. Resilience in Immigration felt to me like the natural companion to Lives of Three Generations of Bedouin women not because there's anything in common in the texts themselves (the experiences are very different), but because both books felt like absolutely pivotal experiences. As I wrote last year, I can't see someone translating Resilience in Immigration, but my goodness, they should. Readers from around the world deserve to encounter the individual experiences of minority (and majority!) communities within different countries and cultures. I would love to read similar accounts about migration within India, or Arabian-Peninsula Bedouin life as affected by Saudi political upheavals, or or or ...

And so, ultimately, I recommend this Hebrew-language book to my international, mostly-English-speaking audience. I also encourage my Hebrew-speaking audience to reflect on the dearth of Ethiopian-Israeli representation in our literature and seek out what we can. Resilience in Immigration has helped build that spark I felt last year into a solid flame, wanting to read more nonfiction by women from around the world. But specifically for now: I would love to see this gain a wider readership. That's all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WITMonth Day 9 | The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail

In brief: Dunya Mikhail's The War Works Hard  (translated from Arabic by Elizabeth Winslow) is a good book that was one of the more inconsistent works I read this past year. It's tough to say that, especially when I'm excited to read an author and fall in love with her words, but ultimately The War Works Hard felt very much like a collection, for good and for bad. There were some works here that I really loved, there were some works here that I didn't like very much, and there a few that I was thoroughly ambivalent about. Overall, I came away with a mostly positive view of the book, but I won't pretend that I loved it. Instead, I can say that I liked it.

I say this basically every time I need to review a poetry collection, but it's very hard for me to properly "judge" poetry. Poetry is and always will be about how it makes me feel. A good poetry book (or collection) is one that manages to wreck me, one way or the other. Maybe it's because I have to hold my breath to the rhythm of the words or maybe it's because the thoughts and descriptions are so resonant or maybe it's because there's something deeply personal about how emotions are conveyed... It doesn't really matter what the reason is. I'm not usually the sort of reader who lingers on specific phrases or quotes (in poetry or in fiction, for that matter), which really means that either the writing techniques/gimmicks have to be extraordinary to get my attention (see: Inger Christensen's crystal clear alphabet) or the text has to hum with an emotional understanding that lingers beyond the last page (see: Mary Oliver, Tanella Boni, Sulochana Manandhar).

The War Works Hard doesn't quite fulfill either fully, but it also doesn't really disregard it either. Part of the problem, I think, is that it collects poems from three different collections, but in backwards order (i.e. the first poems in the collection are the newest, the last are the oldest). The style and tone shifts in Mikhail's writing end up feeling like they degrade or fold in on themselves, rather than grow. And it's especially odd given the seismic political shifts that take place in the gaps between the original publications. "The War Works Hard" collection was originally written in 2004 (this translation overall was published in 2005), with the previous poems mostly written in the 1990s. Mikhail is an Iraqi writer whose writing is wholly rooted in Iraq's turbulent history between 1990 and 2004. War appears not only in the modern, US-influenced context of 2003, it also appears in her very oldest poems. It's not the only theme in this collection, but it's prevalent enough that the backwards order feels like it misses the point of how much of a constant this really is.

And relevantly, I'm left with my own confused questions. As always, I have to wonder about the politics of translation: Are Mikhail's political/war-related poems more likely to be translated because it fits a "Western" narrative of an Iraqi asylum-seeking poet, or is this her focus of choice? Am I unfairly reading a political context into poems that are actually just about childhood, or is this subtext that I'm supposed to understand? What biases are rooted into how the book is marketed and presented (rather than what the poems themselves offer) and how does this affect my interpretation of the text?

Mikhail's poetry draws circles around themes of death and life (sometimes literally!), with some of the best poems capturing a single instant in a sharp and memorable way. Mikhail's observations about children and old age are particularly nice, especially in shorter poems, though these also often lead back to conclusions about war or violence more explicitly. There is life, of course, and the way many poems end up reframing themselves to focus on children's voices is especially reminiscent of this, but I was still left with the feeling that the book overall focuses on the death side of the coin more than life. Is this my own projection?

This is what I mean by The War Works Hard as inconsistent. Poetry collections are almost always inconsistent in terms of liking some poems more than others, that part is fine, but the problem here was that the whole flow of the book felt a little weird. Like I said at the beginning - this is a good book overall. It's definitely made me want to read more of Mikhail's writing (though probably in a more strictly structured context, if I'm being honest). But I also didn't like the book as a whole in the way I expected to and I'm curious to know how each original poetry book holds up relative to this collection mashup.

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 7 | Beyond Babylon by Igiaba Scega

I'll admit, I was somewhat surprised and disappointed by Beyond Babylon. Igiaba Scego's book (tr. from Italian by Aaron Robertson) caught me off guard from its first pages, which are filled with the sort of crude language that struck me as at odds with the quiet cover photo. And that was fine, for a start; I quickly recognized that the book had its own rhythm going and I was happier for it. The problems began once I realized how the book was progressing, or rather how it wasn't. Publisher-created expectations strike yet again.

I'm learning that I simply need to stop reading book summaries. Beyond Babylon markets itself as a reunion between half-sisters, but this is... emphatically not what the book is about. Narrated by wildly different voices - the aforementioned half-sisters (whose connection we discover fairly late in the book, and it is... honestly pretty subtle), their respective mothers, and their shared father - it's also a book that doesn't feel the need to stick to one narrative style too strictly. This is Beyond Babylon's greatest strength, with the book rarely feeling like any one dull progression. The storytelling is muddled and messy in the best possible way, with each narrator sharing a story across time and space and emotions and internal confusion. The daughters both have very present narrations, sharing about their recent lives in a sharp way that emphasizes both strengths. The mothers loop in their storytelling, with stories about their respective childhoods and thematic hints about what this teaches us about modern life. And then the father hovers in the background, the most distant of the protagonists, and not really much of one himself, preferring to tell .

The downside to this sort of storytelling approach (with a fixed order for each of the characters) is that it doesn't always work as a whole book. In the case of Beyond Babylon, I explicitly think it hurts the novel as a whole. Rather than feeling expansive and epic, each subplot feels perpetually truncated. The rhythm constantly felt just off, especially once three of the characters begin to narrate around similar events. There's an unsettling quality that feels intentional and well-placed, but the overall effect is still one of a story that isn't quite grounded enough in what it's trying to say.

This is another of my major criticisms of Beyond Babylon. The book touches on a lot of different themes, not least because its characters are all so thoroughly different from each other that they each have their own unique contribution to the story. And so we have stories about Somalia, about Italy, about toxic relationships, about sexual abuse and its after-effects, about Argentina's Dirty War, about the diaspora, about the concept of self, about bodies, about family, about identity... The themes end up largely overwhelming any semblance of story that lurks within each individual narrative, and certainly whatever overall message Scego wanted to convey. The individual pieces are there, but they don't really fit together.

It means that the novel as a whole just doesn't really flow well. Each character has such a strong voice that the transitions are jarring rather than identifying, which is such a shame given how well Scego gives them life. And the messages and themes that Scego explores end up feeling thin rather than part of a greater whole. Without getting into specifics, the novel's ending only emphasized the book's flaws, with a truncation that didn't actually wrap the story. At times, it felt like Beyond Babylon was little more than a vessel for conveying certain ideas. which is definitely a legitimate writing choice, but not one that works very well when the story is both so expansive and... padded.

There's a lot I liked in Beyond Babylon. Scego's writing often sizzles and it really is remarkable how well she managed to differentiate between her different characters (in many different ways). Scego also has a wonderful eye for cast-off comments that linger for pages afterward, whether in small observations or world-building remarks. There's so much excellent work going into play here that it ends up more disappointing that the book as a whole doesn't fully work. I'm not disappointed to have read it, but I'm also not sure I can recommend it to most readers. Beyond Babylon inspires admiration and recognition at best, not adoration. As a reader who lives and breathes emotional responses, that's just not enough for me.

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