“[W]ords like Spanish, gypsy, black, or immigrant. / Words that rise like swords, walls that are constructed with words, / the old continents, the new continents, / with the fading kingdoms and kings over there, / on the same ruins, / on the myths and oracles, / America rises,” from “Race,” by Fernando Valverde (trans. by Carolyn Forché)
Translator Tomoyuki Endo on translating the poetry of Shuri Kido. “Since humans acquired command of language, we learned to compare one thing to another, that is to say, metaphor,”
Bite-sized reviews of thirteen books newly in translation in 2021
“what all happens to you under the fig trees / this dizziness the weakness in your knees / an untraceable memory,” from “biting into figs,” by Nilay Özer
“The clouds advance, the winds they swell / The people come, from sorrows they come / With the rains they come, with the winds they come / and thus, for you, they come,” from “Tik'ha Takiy | Song to the Flowers,” by Elvira Espejo Ayca
“In the margin, going paler and paler, / where not even one line has been written, / an empty sky has already collapsed. / (After that, 500 years pass) / And in the second line, not yet written, / a water rail begins to chirp,” from “Wandering Birds,” by Shuri Kido (trans. by Tomoyuki Endo & Forrest Gander)
The following tales were recounted and shared collectively by a group of women who wish to be identified by name: Agnes Kaunda Chiwamine, Rosemary Mushota, Scolastica Kalengule Chiwamine, Exildah Mwansa Musoka, and Sarah Mweba.
Each Saturday evening, they would meet, braiding and unbraiding their hair in a synchronized rhythm. But then one night, everything changed.
Why would a girl of fourteen choose a minor key? Let Chopin carry you away, just as he does Nina, who brings the revolution to the keys of a prewar Steinway.
Seventy years of Palestinian fragmentation since Israel’s creation have taken their toll. The Palestinians of today are split into different communities living different lives from one another. Here, a British Palestinian writer reflects on both the identity forced upon her and on the one she has created.
Naomi Shihab Nye examines the question, "Will there be peace in Palestine?" through the legacy of her father’s life.
Using Bruce Charles Mollison’s How to Prepare for the Collapse of Capitalism as a starting point, Eric Schierloh partially rewrites and expands far beyond it to imagine non-industrial publishing.
Sarah Moore interviews multitalented French writer Noémi Lefebvre. “You can’t be afraid of yourself when writing, but at the same time you need to be afraid because writing reveals who you really are.” - Noémi Lefebvre
Keija Parssinen interviews Isabella Hammad, author of The Parisian, a book that “luxuriates in language and radiates intelligence.”
Contributing editor Erik Gleibermann interviews Colombian writer Ingrid Rojas Contreras, whose memoir-in-progress, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, centers on her curandero grandfather.
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