“I was more impressed by what I heard from my mother than by what I read in the library.”
Literature in Translation
Editors: Bonnie Chau & Bécquer Seguín
Past Editor: Stephen Twilley
“Beowulf”: A Horror Show
Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation of “Beowulf” forces us to think about what we need to be true about the past, and our access to it.
The Stories Women Tell of Loneliness
“I have an appetite for silence,” Emily Dickinson wrote, for “silence is infinity.” But are women today relishing in their solitude?
This Review Should Not Exist
Latin American authors must defer to “Latin America”—as imagined by centers of literary power—to be translated, to sell, to make money.
Healing through Ordinary Stories
What Chinese readers consume diverges from what is translated into English. Writers of ordinary life are often left untranslated—until now.
Miguel de Unamuno in Spain’s Memory Battle
As fascist armies conquered much of Spain, a writer publicly and famously denounced high-ranking officers right to their faces. Or did he?
Did Don Quixote Long for Muslim Spain?
Between the lines, Cervantes critiqued the Catholic church, and lamented over the systematic destruction of Islamic culture in Spain.
Subaquatic Homesick Blues
A Taiwanese scifi novel—set under the sea, after the surface becomes unlivable—reveals the remarkable burst of cultural freedom in 1990s Taiwan.
When the Vibe Is Off
Which matters more, intent or interpretation? What if a juxtaposition of images in literature or art is just that—a chance encounter?
“Between the Experiment and the Essence”: Emma Ramadan Talks Translation
“For those of us who can feel unsettled in terms of identity, translation can feel like home.”
A Dad Cartoonist Travels into Factory Life
The artist comes as a class outsider to the factory, marveling at the complexity of its machinery and the dexterity and dangers of manual labor.
The Borderland between Language and Genre
Within western poetry, women writers of color—and their lived experiences—are not nearly as recognized nor represented as their white peers.
Turkish Literature at Sea
The global literary market is a body of books in translation that, despite being from very disparate contexts, sound a lot like each other. Why?
The “I” in Murakami
Discussing Murakami within the Japanese literary tradition is in itself rare. He is, by his own admission, less well-loved in Japan than abroad.
Seek, Memory …
If memory is an unreliable narrator, how can it be the medium through which we arrive at the truth about ourselves?
France and the Question of Consent
Two memoirs trenchantly critique the ways in which France has framed sexual consent, legally and culturally, since the 1970s.
To Read against Ferrante—or alongside Her?
Despite using a pseudonym, Ferrante has made clear how readers should understand her work. Should critics listen?
How to Read like a Translator
To work as a translator is to encounter a text with an active desire in mind, a desire that both constitutes and modifies the way that text is experienced.
How War—and Racism—Makes Monsters out of Men
In both World Wars, France used West African “colonial conscripts.” Deployed on the front lines, they were often the first to be killed.
When Poetry Summons the Dead
The dead, the disappeared, and the forgotten—these Iberian poems make clear—can never be safely put away.