Week 5: All That Is Known and Unknown

40 Books in 40 Weeks: I'm reading one book from my to-read shelf per week through the end of the year. Afterward, I write a post here: not a review, just a reaction to something or many things in the book. It's keeping me accountable.

feminism is for everybody, by bell hooks
South End Press, 2000

Whoa. I needed this book.

I need this book.

Everyone needs this book.

Like. If you'd asked me if I'm a feminist before, I'd always say "sure", but apparently that was never part of my identity. It should be an integral part. I need to be an active feminist.

Yeah, I'm young, fine, I was born in the late 80s, but I thought I pretty much understood that, "way back when", women started wearing pants and eschewing bras if they wanted to, but I never understood just how much work other women had done on my behalf. How hard they fought. How easily all of this could be taken away. Reproductive rights -- we're still fighting for that. Equal pay -- we're still fighting for that. So how much of what women today enjoy as givens, what we take for granted, might vanish in a poof of conservative patriarchal whimsy?

But at the same time, here's something else I never understood: White Feminism. (Yes, capital W, capital F.) Everything that I've been conditioned to see as the goals of feminism, what we've already accomplished . . . most of that has been for the benefit of white upper-middle class women. Getting into the workforce? Most women in poverty, most women of color, they'd already been in the workforce in the 30s/40s/50s/60s. They'd love to have the freedom and financial flexibility to stay home with their kids. Why did I never consider this before.

And how there's a huge difference in being able to exist and succeed within the current white patriarchal society as a white woman -- being able to succeed in the way that white men have defined -- and completely redefining and restructuring society to be feminist. Friendly to everyone, conducive to everyone's success, whether male or female or both or neither or otherwise.

OK. There's a lot more for me to learn, and a lot more I've already absorbed in the last few years. Here are some other interesting links to consider (which have been helping me a little, so maybe other people will find them helpful, too):
http://battymamzelle.blogspot.com/2014/01/This-Is-What-I-Mean-When-I-Say-White-Feminism.html
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/navigating-whiteness-feminism/
https://crossknit.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/so-you-wanna-be-an-intersectional-feminist/
https://unapologeticfeminism.com/2016/12/ready-ditch-white-feminism-6-black-feminist-concepts-need-know/
https://www.facebook.com/amanda.kemp.5249/videos/10155347895807859/
http://www.blackgirldangerous.com/2017/04/boy-story-baby-teaching-gender/
http://www.mymindsnaps.com/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-writes-about-how-to-raise-a-daughter/
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/white-fragility-why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism-twlm/
http://everydayfeminism.com/tag/fem101/
http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1907-women-strike-a-reading-list-for-international-women-s-day

And finally, if I haven't made this clear enough: for anyone who's never read this book before, GO READ THIS BOOK. Go find out who bell hooks is. Go understand why there's so much more to learn.

Next up: Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver

Week 3/4: Oh My, OMI

Ach. Of course I've already missed a week. Oh well. Onward and upward!

40 Books in 40 Weeks: I'm reading one book from my to-read shelf per week through the end of the year. Afterward, I write a post here: not a review, just a reaction to something or many things in the book. It's keeping me accountable.

Ghachar Ghochar, by Vivek Shanbhag
Translated by Srinath Perur
Penguin Books, 2017

For an actual review, see the one in the New York Times.
For one of the most beautiful, touching, and appropriate examples of how to review a translation, see here. (Spoiler alert: it's the same link.)

Here are my thoughts: Ants. Ants. Ants ants ants ants ANTS ANTS ANTS. Ants.

No but seriously I laughed so hard at the ants. And then felt awfully guilty several dozen pages later when Anita is so horrified that the narrator "casually jabbed" at another one in another time and another place. Have I been treating ants all wrong my entire life? Are we all just ants in someone else's house, falling desperately on any scrap of leftover food, only to be surrounded by a moat of water and drowned without remorse? Do rich people squash poor people like ants, and call them evil spirits to assuage any guilt they might have? And what about the spilled curry? Why was there only one person crying over it?

Oh, Vivek. Oh, Srinath. Thank you for this book.

(I got to meet both of them at Art OMI's Translation Lab last fall. We had long discussions about many things, including why it is that Americans don't generally have cooks, even as the upper and middle classes have started hiring other people for cleaning and childcare and lawn maintenance and basically everything else.)

Next up: feminism is for everybody, by bell hooks

Week 2: A Narrative Introduction to White Supremacy in America

40 Books in 40 Weeks: I'm reading one book from my to-read shelf per week through the end of the year. Afterward, I write a post here: not a review, just a reaction to something or many things in the book. It's keeping me accountable.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest J. Gaines
Dial Press, 1971

This is the book that ties it all together. In history class, you learn about slavery, you learn about sharecropping, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow laws, segregation, and then the Civil Rights era. But this book links all of that in one person's life, one narrative. It helps you understand how, truly, there never was a time in our country's history where black people were treated fairly, decently, like full citizens, like humans. The government had to legislate equality. But legislation can't abolish racism.

Found this on Wikipedia: "Because of the historical content, some readers thought the book was non-fiction. Gaines commented:

Some people have asked me whether or not The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is fiction or nonfiction. It is fiction. When Dial Press first sent it out, they did not put "a novel" on the galleys or on the dustjacket, so a lot of people had the feeling that it could have been real. ... I did a lot of research in books to give some facts to what Miss Jane could talk about, but these are my creations. I read quite a few interviews performed with former slaves by the WPA during the thirties and I got their rhythm and how they said certain things. But I never interviewed anybody. (Ferris, Bill (July–August 1998). "A Conversation with Ernest Gaines". Humanities. 19 (4).)"

There's just so much in here to be ashamed of as a white American, from the grand sweeping societal norms to the little details, like how the black narrator very naturally sees Jesus as a blond-haired "White Man" and the devil as "jet black" in color.

As a girl of about twelve at the end of the Civil War, Jane ends up trying to travel north to Ohio from Louisiana with a small boy. After travelling for several days, they get food and water at an old man's house. He's got a map. She asks how long it'll take them to Ohio. He spends three whole pages in one run-on paragraph guesstimating how much ground they can cover based on their weight, in bad weather, running away from dogs, keeping out of sight of people, but then reaching a place where the news of emancipation hasn't gotten to yet so they get roped into essentially slavery again, years pass, she gets saddled with a bad husband . . . "The boy'll never make it. You? I figure it'll take you about thirty years. Give or take a couple."

She's stubborn and tired of people telling her she shouldn't be trying to get to Ohio, so they set off anyway. But it's all so true. She didn't ask that question, but he answered it anyway. These are all the obstacles black people have been fighting in this country since the Civil War. It didn't all of a sudden get easy.

Miss Jane, she tells her story the way she wants to, though. And I loved the way she tells it, the people she knows, her world, her matriarchal society, mentioning women before their husbands, pointing out the house where Grace Turner lived, oh, she was married to so-and-so.

But she never did make it to Ohio. A hundred and ten years old, and she never left the state of Louisiana.

Next up: Ghachar Ghochar, by Vivek Shanbhag, tr. Srinath Perur

Week 1: Waiting for Dogot

40 Books in 40 Weeks: I'm reading one book from my to-read shelf per week through the end of the year. Afterward, I write a post here: not a review, just a reaction to something or many things in the book. It's keeping me accountable.

Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs, by Lina Wolff
Translated by Frank Perry
And Other Stories, 2016

Jacket copy. A necessary evil. The back cover of this book starts off by saying this:

"At a run-down brothel in Caudal, Spain, the prostitutes are collecting stray dogs. Each is named after a famous male writer: Dante, Chaucer, Bret Easton Ellis. When a john is cruel, the dogs are fed rotten meat."

Also, the book's title hints at these dogs. Vaguely. Around the edges.

And how long did I have to wait for the dogs to show up?? TWO HUNDRED PAGES. The whole book is only 297. And Bret is mentioned (in passing, I might add) for the first time on page 201. His backstory, and indeed the whole treatment that the dogs are given at the brothel, shows up a mere 50 pages from the end.

COME ON.

Thing is, this is an awesome book! Female narrators (for the most part) that are real, multifaceted people, telling engaging stories -- one is actually an author, explicitly writing engaging stories within this novel -- but I literally thought I'd picked up the wrong book at numerous intervals. Or maybe that the wrong cover had been slapped on. It's distracting, when all you're trying to do is enjoy the remarkably vindictive feminism of Alba Cambó, the aforementioned author, who has an interview in a magazine alongside a short story:

"In it she said that the entertainment value of a violated female body was infinite and inexhaustible and that in writing about violated male bodies her aim was to explore the kind of entertainment value they offered. Rather unwisely she pre-empted the journalist's questions by wondering rhetorically what was wrong with depicting violated male bodies when women's bodies were continually being used in literature for that purpose? Some writers wrote like lazily masturbating monkeys in overheated cages, she said. They wrote as though they had lost the taste for the real flavours of a dish and had to keep adding salt and pork fat in order to make it taste of anything. Raped and murdered women here, raped and murdered women there, that was the only way the readers' interest could be kept alive, said Alba Cambó."

Aaaaaaaaaahhhh. Thank you, Lina Wolff.

All the women's stories are better than the men's. Just in general, all throughout this book. Although one of the males who narrates his own story is a very anti-macho character, which is pretty edifying, too.

Last thing I'll say: Alba's childhood tucked away in a gorgeous house outside of a crushingly ancient rural town reminded me so much of the women in Cristina López Barrio's The House of Impossible Loves, translated by Lisa Carter a few years back. Also a really excellent book. But of course that meant that all the stories in both books started twisting around in my head, and now I think of a maid from one book as a muse from the other, just because they were both gazed at from one apartment window to another across the way. Eh, well. Worse things have happened.

At least I finally met those dogs.

Next up: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, by Ernest J. Gaines

40 Books in 40 Weeks

Hi.

Erm. Yes, hello. Yes, this thing is still on. Good.

Sorry for the absence. I went on maternity leave . . . and now my son is approaching his first birthday. My how time flies, and other platitudes.

Now, I find myself with very little free time, yet facing an unwieldy to-read pile and craving a reason to restart this blog. So let's kill two birds with one stone, and other sayings. Besides, everybody likes a good challenge!

Here's the plan: I'm going to read one book a week from now until the end of the year. (Conveniently, that's forty weeks. How pleasing.) I'll write a reaction post when I finish each book. It should be fun. I've got a lot of good books I've been meaning to read. Now I will!

A few notes to the public, since I happen to be writing in a public place:

• All books will be ones I already own. They're literally in piles on the floor next to my bookshelves. Suggestions are welcome, but will ultimately be ignored. (Until next year.)
• The posts will not be reviews, at least not in any traditional sense. Maybe I'll talk about the whole book, maybe I'll rant about two sentences on page 72. Maybe I'll give a synopsis, maybe I'll rewrite the ending. There will probably be a lot of emotions. Who knows? I'm also not setting any sort of minimum length -- I can barely keep up with producing enough words for my translations, as it is.
• This is just to keep me accountable. I'm only reading for myself. But if you find all of it interesting, then, well, welcome to my brain. You'll like it here.

First post will come next week, once I finish one of the books sitting partially read next to my bed . . .

Want to read along? First up: Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs, by Lina Wolff, tr. Frank Perry

Studying the Backlash

Sadly, there's a new trend that's emerged, one that disproportionately affects people who are curious and inclusive by nature: hateful backlash and threats on the Internet.

Good job, humanity.

It's the kind of thing that makes you weep, that makes you scared, but it always happens to other people. It's just in the video game industry, right? It could never happen to me. It could never happen to us writers. All we have to deal with is censorship, right? (Not that that couldn't be dangerous, too.)

But I read a very interesting article the other day, a report by Chloe Angyal, an editor at the Huffington Post. "I Decided Not To Read Books By White Authors For A Year. Conservatives Lost Their Damn Minds." Take a moment and go read it, then come back here and we can debrief.

-------

Hi, welcome back.

Besides the general problem I have with people hating other people, the fear of things unknown that makes people lash out in anger, and what could possibly ever lead someone to threaten the life or well-being of another human just for implying that other humans are in fact human, there's a weird dichotomy here. Angyal is receiving vitriolic backlash for publicly stating her intent to read books by non-white authors in 2016. But Ann Morgan's project (and subsequent book) to read one book from every country in the world, A Year of Reading the World, received no such hatemail. (It's true. I asked her.) Whew.

On the surface, these two projects don't seem that different. One is publicly championing "minority" or "non-white" authors; the other, "foreign" authors. Both of these groups are part of the "unknown other" for the large section of the literary world that is white Anglophones. And although Angyal has a bigger online presence than Morgan, the latter has attracted a relatively sizable following in recent years. She's even given a TED talk.

So what is it? Is Angyal's project, shall we say for the sake of argument, designed to attract racists, by explicitly stating she won't be "reading any books by white people" this year? Whereas perhaps Morgan's project played more into the concept of exotic and attractive foreigner? Is it as simple as Angyal's idea being to NOT read certain things, and Morgan's idea being to read MORE things? I'm certainly not saying (oh gods please no) that either of these women deserve any hatred or backlash. But why the difference?

I don't have an answer. I can't figure out why Angyal's getting the response she is. I enjoy being optimistic and believing that we all can just love everyone, and I'm often disappointed. I think that reading books is fantastic, that everyone can read whatever books they'd like, and that reading books by authors who aren't like you in some way can open your worldview and bring you immense joy.

But then again, I'm a translator. Of course I would think that.

"Erfurt" Giveaway

I was going through old posts this morning and discovered that, the first time I did this, I called it something ridiculous. But tradition must be upheld. And thus, please prepare yourselves for:

The Second Not-Nearly-Regular-Enough-To-Be-Called-Annual A.M.C. Giveaway!

*assorted cheers and trumpets*

The Prize: Two (2) randomly-chosen people will each receive one (1) e-book copy of Return to Erfurt, Story of a Shattered Childhood: 1935-1945, by Olga Tarcali, translated by yours truly, published by Centro Primo Levi Editions, released this month. I can't inscribe them this time, but you have the option of receiving a handwritten letter from me to go along with your book, if you so choose.

The Entry(-ies): There are two ways of entering, each of which grants you one entry (so every person can enter up to twice).

1. In honor of Olga Tarcali, Marianne's best friend who wrote her story in book form, leave a comment on this post of who you would want to write your memoir (other than yourself). Bonus brownie points for explaining why.
2. To help spread the word, tweet a link to this post. Must either tweet at me (@sunshineabroad) or include this hashtag: #ErfurtGiveaway

The Deadline: End of this week! Friday, February 27, 2015, at 11:59 p.m. EST.

The Rules: After the contest, I will randomly select two entrants (by assigning a number to each comment and Twitter account and using a random number generator), and announce the winners on this blog on Monday, March 2. I will then contact the winners for their email address and, if desired, mailing address. Anyone with a valid email address anywhere in the world may enter. Limit two entries per person.

The Why: This is the most important book I've ever worked on, and it's a damn good one. I'd like to share it with people.

Good luck to all!

Announcement Time!

Remember that oh-so-emotionally-challenging yet ultimately rewarding book I told you lovely readers about a while back? This one. The book that I refuse to call my "Holocaust book". The one about a German girl's exile to France, hiding in Italy, and then life in France after the war . . . the girl-turned-woman who I got to meet, Marianne Spier-Donati. One of the bravest and most wonderful women I've ever met.

(There seems to be a theme, here. The first book I translated was also about another great woman, author George Sand. Huh. Nice connection.)

Anyway, back to the point at hand. This is a publishing announcement!

Yes, that's right: my translation of Return to Erfurt, Story of a Shattered Childhood: 1935-1945, by Olga Tarcali, has officially been published by Centro Primo Levi Editions.

Isn't it pretty? It fits in really nicely with all the different series that CPL Editions has started publishing. All of the books are fantastic. (Check them out here.)

Things to note:

1. Yes, I will be doing a giveaway shortly. Stay tuned! More info TK.
2. If you find yourself in New York City next week, CPL Editions is reopening the SF Vanni bookshop in celebration of all their new publications. The party will be on Tuesday, February 17th, 6-9:00 p.m., at 30 West 12th St. Full announcement here.
3. Finally, and most importantly, you can purchase the book now! Paperbacks here, ebooks here, and more info from the publisher here.

Go forth and read! (I mean, it doesn't have to be this book; you should be reading excellent things, anyway.)

Wine and Books

They go really well together.

Kidding. Well, not actually kidding at all. But that's not what this is about.

So, more specifically: book reviews and wine descriptions. They're starting to get scarily similar.

No, I haven't started reading about "hints of oak" or "overtones of caramel" in book reviews. But you know the thing about wine descriptions: there are a select few people in this world whose palates are trained enough to be able to pick out those notes of plum or dark chocolate without being prompted. For the rest of the world, there's just a simple difference between good wines and bad wines. And for the most part, it's all completely subjective. Your own tastes determine whether a wine is good or bad to you, whether you'll enjoy it or not. There are a few wines that pretty much everyone agrees are universally good, but even there, everyone may have a different reason for drinking it.

The more book reviews I read, the more I think that books are just the same as wine. There are lots of good books out there, and lots of not-so-good ones. But move beyond that almost-universal dichotomy, even ever so slightly, and it suddenly becomes a matter of personal taste. I think Perec and the Oulipo crowd are fascinating; other people can't get over the craziness. On the flip side, I really appreciate the widely-acclaimed Maidenhair, but I still haven't managed to finish it.

I read a book for a class last spring that I thought was . . . fine.* I thought the book had some pretty ambitious and admirable goals, but that it didn't really achieve many of them. But there are other reviews out there, other readers who think the book was amazing. They've used words like "vibrancy" and "liveliness" to describe the author's writing. They speak of an "authenticity" in the retelling that I didn't see. They describe the "impassioned" and "arresting" story, which are very present emotions that I didn't feel.

I know book reviews can be extremely subjective, but there's also a rather large element of authority that we ascribe to many book reviewers. It's the same kind of trust we place in sommeliers and winegrowers, the ones who know the terroir, who know the kind of volcanic soil in Sicily that give this particular wine its peat-moss quality, the lack of rain in the third week of August in 2003 that causes the elevated sweetness of that particular Riesling, the bourbon barrels that age one of California's Cab Sauvs in a specific way. They know things, so we trust them.

But if you can't taste the peach, does that mean you're a bad wine drinker? If you don't feel "arrested" by the story, does that make you a bad reader?

No. Of course not. The beauty of humankind's variety, all our wide-ranging tastes, and all that. Personal preference will always have some sort of effect on our judgment of subjective artistic endeavors, whether experienced over our palate or through our brain. As long as you can explain why something didn't mesh with your tastes--in an intelligent fashion, without making personal attacks--your opinion is just as valid as any reviewer's.

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*This has no bearing on the author, whom I met--I think this person is pretty fabulous and a great speaker. I'm also purposefully not giving enough information to identify either the work or the author, since this is not about my personal experience with the book, but rather just looking at the general subjectivity of literary enjoyment.

Devil's Advocate

Here's a not-so-popular idea: translators should have the visibility of editors, not authors.

There was a whole uproar on a literary translators forum a while back about an article in the NYTimes, where David Gordon, an mid-range American author wrote about his strange and unexpected success in Japan. Translators were getting their panties all in a twist because said author never once mentioned his translator, who was probably single-handedly responsible for said Japanese success. Some even took him to task on his own blog for it, where he responded quite gracefully:

My translator's name is Aoki Chizuru and I certainly have thanked her, in person, in print and in public, in English and in Japanese, and have also expressed gratitude when receiving the awards for those who even made it possible for me to read the books I loved from Japan and elsewhere. She translated my second book as well and is working on the third. So don't worry!

Either way, it sparked a couple of comments from translators lamenting about the fact that authors and reviewers not only didn't mention their translators in print, but editors were also left out.

Editors are pretty much universally left out. As are publishing houses. And agents. And publicists. And foreign rights directors. All the damn time.

Far from being something to moan and whine about, this is instead just the normal course of business. There are always the players in the limelight, and the dozens of other people behind each one of them that makes everything happen. And it's not just in the book industry, either. How many producers do you know in the music industry, besides Brian Eno and Timbaland? How often are screenwriters publicly thanked and acknowledged for their work, besides the credits at the end of a movie and the Academy Awards (and even then, those awards might not be shown in the main broadcast)? How many times have you wandered through an old European city without knowing the names of any of the artists who sculpted the half-naked marble beauties in the park?

I'm not arguing that translators do unimportant work. Far from it. Translation is some of the most important artistic work out there, if such things can even be ranked on some sort of scale. But how do you compare a translator's importance and artistic merit with the original author? Or with an editor's influence?

And what if, as was mentioned in one of my classes recently, a book reviewer is working with an extremely limited word count -- 500 words, maybe even 300, a mere blurb. Feel free to take such reviewers to task if the translator's name is not mentioned in the metadata listing of the book, but if the translator gets glossed over in such a bite-sized review, it's not such a crime, really.

Related to that, there was a time when PEN's Translation Committee sent strongly-worded letters condemning a reviewer if they neglected to mention the translator in their review. Far from bringing about the expected change, many reviewers bristled quite a bit at such an attack. Their reasoning was that at least they were reviewing any translations in the first place. Which is a fair point.

There's a time and a place to thank everyone involved in a bringing a book to life, and hopefully, everyone all gets their proper due. But normally, the spotlight is fixed entirely on the author and his or her words, no matter how much revising or rewriting or writing their editor actually did throughout the whole process. Why should translators be treated any differently?

Whew. End thought experiment. For now.

(Disclaimer: as you can probably figure out by the title, I'm playing devil's advocate here. I'm not at all convinced by my own argument, but it's an interesting idea.)

(Also, there are plenty of articles out there playing rebuttal to this. See Words Without Borders and Asymptote's blog to start.)