Tag: Chinese

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Women in Translation: Five books published by Fitzcarraldo Editions

This month, August, is a chance to celebrate women in translation, specifically women authors who’s works have been translated. There’s so much good translated literature out there. For this month, I’ll be sharing some inspiration from women authors all around the world who have had their work translated into English.

I know a lot of people read works translated from English (or other languages) into their own language. There’s so much important translation work that needs to be done to make works more accessible to the world. But since I only read in English, I’m going to be highlighting works that have been translated into English.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be focusing on independent book publishers that focus on publishing works in translation.

For this week, we’ll be highlighting Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Fitzcarraldo Editions is an independent publisher specialising in contemporary fiction and long-form essays.

Source: https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/about/

Fitzcarraldo Editions is another independent British book publisher (similar to Charco Press and Tilted Axis Press). They don’t have a specific regional focus, they are just interested on little-known or neglected authors.

Currently, Fitzcarraldo Editions publishes about 22 titles each year, and you can sign up to a subscription to receive the books published that year. If you go here, you can sign up for a subscription and choose how many books you want to receive.

Photo by Christopher Lowe on Unsplash

Fitzcarraldo Editions was founded in 2014, and has grown significantly in the past 10 years. Over the past decade, four of Fitzcarraldo’s authors have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, including:

  • Svetlana Alexievich (2015)
  • Olga Tokarczuk (2018)
  • Annie Ernaux (2022)
  • Jon Fosse (2023)

They’ve also done a really good job at branding their books. All books are published in their signature colour of deep blue for fiction, and white for any nonfiction/essays, making them easy to spot when browsing for books. Also, they use a custom serif typeface called Fitzcarraldo.

Personally, Fitzcarraldo Editions feels a lot more established than the other publishing houses I’ve highlighted. This makes them feel a little less personalized or focused on specific themes, but they’re still doing amazing work and helping to get works out into the world that might not otherwise exist.

If you want to learn more about Fitzcaraldo Editions, you can visit their website here or read about them here on Wikipedia.

Five translated books written by women from Fitzcarraldo Editions

Here’s a list of five translated books written by women from Fitzcarraldo Editions.

  1. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead / Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych by Olga Tokarczuk (2009)
    Poland
  2. Minor Detail / تفصيل ثانوي – by Adania Shibli / عدنية شبلي from (2017)
    Palestine
  3. Strangers I Know / La straniera by Claudia Durastanti (2019)
    Italy
  4. Owlish / 鷹頭貓與音樂箱女孩 by Dorothy Tse / 謝曉虹 (2020)
    Hong Kong
  5. Paradais / Páradais by Fernanda Melchor (2021)
    Mexico

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead / Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych (2009) – Poland

by Olga Tokarczuk,
Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

  • Year Published: 2009
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, contemporary, literary, thriller, dark, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • Language: Polish
  • Shortlisted for the 2019 International Booker Prize
  • Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature

One of Poland’s most imaginative and lyrical writers, Olga Tokarczuk presents us with a detective story with a twist in DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD. After her two dogs go missing and members of the local hunting club are found murdered, teacher and animal rights activist Janina Duszejko becomes involved in the ensuing investigation. Part magic realism, part detective story, DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD is suspenseful and entertaining reimagining of the genre interwoven with poignant and insightful commentaries on our perceptions of madness, marginalised people and animal rights.

Links:

Minor Detail / تفصيل ثانوي – Palestine (2017)

by Adania Shibli / عدنية شبلي,
Translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette

  • Year Published: 2017
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, contemporary, historical, literary, dark, sad, tense, medium-paced
  • Portrays the aftermath of the Nakba (aka the catastrophe) in Palestine

Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba – the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 people – and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.

Links:

Strangers I Know / La straniera (2019) – Italy

by Claudia Durastanti,
Translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris

  • Year Published: 2019
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, literary, emotional, reflective, medium-paced

Every family has its own mythology, but in this family none of the myths match up. Claudia’s mother says she met her husband when she stopped him from jumping off a bridge. Her father says it happened when he saved her from an attempted robbery. Both parents are deaf but couldn’t be more different; they can’t even agree on how they met, much less who needed saving.

Into this unlikely yet somehow inevitable union, our narrator is born. She comes of age with her brother in this strange, and increasingly estranged, household split between a small village in southern Italy and New York City. Without even sign language in common – their parents have not bothered to teach them – family communications are chaotic and rife with misinterpretations. An outsider in every way, she longs for a freedom she’s not even sure exists. Only books and punk rock – and a tumultuous relationship – begin to show her the way to create her own mythology, to construct her own version of the story of her life.

Kinetic, formally daring, and strikingly original, Strangers I Know is a funny and profound portrait of an unconventional family that makes us look anew at how language shapes our understanding of ourselves.

Links:

Owlish / 鷹頭貓與音樂箱女孩 (2020) – Hong Kong

by Dorothy Tse / 謝曉虹,
Translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce

  • Year Published: 2020
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, literary, magical realism, challenging, dark, mysterious, slow-paced

In the mountainous city of Nevers, there lives a professor of literature called Q. He has a dull marriage and a lacklustre career, but also a scrumptious collection of antique dolls locked away in his cupboard. And soon Q lands his crowning acquisition: a life-sized ballerina named Aliss who has tantalizingly sprung to life. Guided by his mysterious friend Owlish and inspired by an inexplicably familiar painting, Q embarks on an all-consuming love affair with Aliss, oblivious to the sinister forces encroaching on his city and the protests spreading across the university that have left his classrooms all but empty. A deliciously dark subversion of the fairy-tale form set in an alternate Hong Kong, Dorothy Tse’s extraordinary debut novel is a boldly inventive exploration of life under oppressive regimes and an urgent warning against the insidious perils of apathy and indifference.

Links:

Paradais / Páradais (2021) – Mexico

by Fernanda Melchor,
Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes

  • Year Published: 2021
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, contemporary, crime, literary, challenging, dark, tense, fast-paced
  • Longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize

Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor – an attractive married woman and mother – while Polo dreams about quitting his gruelling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme. Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society – with its racist, classist, hyperviolent tendencies – and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Are you familiar with Fitzcarraldo Editions? If so, I’d love to hear which books you enjoyed from their collection or which books you are excited to read.

Do you know of any other independent publishers like Fitzcarraldo Editions? I’d love to hear all about them in a comment below!

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Women in Translation: Five books published by Tilted Axis Press

This month, August, is a chance to celebrate women in translation, specifically women authors who’s works have been translated. There’s so much good translated literature out there. For this month, I’ll be sharing some inspiration from women authors all around the world who have had their work translated into English.

I know a lot of people read works translated from English (or other languages) into their own language. There’s so much important translation work that needs to be done to make works more accessible to the world. But since I only read in English, I’m going to be highlighting works that have been translated into English.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be focusing on independent book publishers that focus on publishing works in translation.

For this week, we’ll be highlighting Tilted Axis Press:

Tilted Axis Press is an independent publisher of contemporary literature by the Global Majority, translated into or written in a variety of Englishes. Founded in 2015, our practice is an ongoing exploration into alternatives – to the hierarchisation of certain languages and forms of translation, and the monoculture of globalisation.

Source: https://www.tiltedaxispress.com/about
Photo by Jason W on Unsplash

Tilted Axis Press was founded in 2015 by Deborah Smith, the translator of The Vegetarian by Han Kang. Her English translation of the work (from the Korean), won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize and was very well received internationally. She used the funds and success from this work to create Tilted Axis Press.

Tomb of Sand by Geentanjali Shree (translated into English from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell) was published by Tilted Axis Press, and won the International Booker Prize in 2022. Tilted Axis Press received a lot of attention for this award and increased their international recognition.

After winning the International Booker Prize in 2022, Deborah Smith decided to step down as Publisher and Managing Director of Tilted Axis Press. Kristen Vida Alfaro is Deborah’s successor and currently leads the publishing company.

Tilted Axis Press publishes a handful of books throughout the year (~6-9), focusing on contemporary translated fiction, with some poetry and non-fiction too.

Each year you can buy a yearly subscription, to receive all the book published that year. They send you the books throughout the year as they get published. You can still buy the bundle for 2024, either to receive the print/physical books or as e-books.

I find that Tilted Axis Press currently fills a pretty unique gap in the publishing industry by helping to get modern Southeast Asian books translated into English. They publish books from all over the region, including Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, which rarely get the attention of big publishers.

If you’re interested, you can learn more at their website or on wikipedia. Or you can read one of the books listed below that have been published by Tilted Axis Press.

Five translated books written by women from Tilted Axis Press

Here’s a list of five translated books written by women from Tilted Axis Press

  1. Chinatown by Thuận (2005)
    Vietnam
  2. Strange Beasts of China/异兽志 by Yan Ge (颜歌) (2006)
    China
  3. Every Fire You Tend / Yüzünde Bir Yer by Sema Kaygusuz (2009)
    Turkey
  4. Tomb of Sand / रेत समाधि by Geetanjali Shree / गीतांजलि श्री (2018)
    India
  5. Arid Dreams / ฝันแห้งและเรื่องอื่นๆ by Duanwad Pimwana / เดือนวาด พิมวนา (2019)
    Thailand

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

Chinatown (2005) – Vietnam

by Thuận,
Translated from the Vietnamese by An Lý Nguyễn

  • Year Published: 2005
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, literary, emotional, reflective, sad, medium-paced
  • Winner of the 2023 ALTA National Translation Award

An abandoned package is discovered in the Paris Metro: the subway workers suspect it’s a terrorist bomb. A Vietnamese woman sitting nearby, her son asleep on her shoulder, waits and begins to reflect on her life, from her constrained childhood in communist Hanoi, to a long period of study in Leningrad during the Gorbachev period, and finally to the Parisian suburbs where she now teaches English. Through everything runs her passion for Thuy, the father of her son, a writer who lives in Saigon’s Chinatown, and who, with the shadow of the China-Vietnam border war falling darkly between them, she has not seen for eleven years.

Through her breathless, vertiginous, and deeply moving monologue from beside the subway tracks, the narrator attempts to once and for all face the past and exorcize the passion that haunts her.

Links:

Strange Beasts of China/异兽志 (2006) – China

by Yan Ge (颜歌),
Translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Jeremy Tiang

  • Year Published: 2006
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, contemporary, fantasy, literary, dark, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • Translated version published in 2021 through Tilted Axis press

From one of the most exciting voices in contemporary Chinese literature, an uncanny and playful novel that blurs the line between human and beast …

In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness—save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes, and strange birthmarks.

Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast, and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self.

Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China engages existential questions of identity, humanity, love and morality with whimsy and stylistic verve.

Links:

Every Fire You Tend / Yüzünde Bir Yer (2009) – Turkey

by Sema Kaygusuz,
Translated from the Turkish by Nicholas Glastonbury

  • Year Published: 2009
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, historical, literary, emotional, reflective, medium-paced

In 1938, in the remote Dersim region of Eastern Anatolia, the Turkish Republic launched an operation to erase an entire community of Zaza-speaking Alevi Kurds. Inspired by those brutal events, and the survival of Kaygusuz’s own grandmother, this densely lyrical and allusive novel grapples with the various inheritances of genocide, gendered violence and historical memory as they reverberate across time and place from within the unnamed protagonist’s home in contemporary Istanbul.

Kaygusuz imagines a narrative anchored by the weight of anguish and silence, fuelled by mysticism, wisdom and beauty. This is a powerful exploration of a still-taboo subject, deeply significant to the fault lines of modern-day Turkey.

Links:

Tomb of Sand / रेत समाधि (2018) – India

by Geetanjali Shree / गीतांजलि श्री,
Translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell

  • Year Published: 2018
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, literary, emotional, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • Language: Hindi
  • Winner of International Book Prize in 2022

An eighty-year-old woman slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention – including striking up a friendship with a hijra (trans) woman – confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more ‘modern’ of the two.

At the older woman’s insistence they travel back to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist.

Rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Geetanjali Shree’s playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders.

Links:

Arid Dreams / ฝันแห้งและเรื่องอื่นๆ (2019) – Thailand

by Duanwad Pimwana / เดือนวาด พิมวนา,
Translated from the Thai by Mui Poopoksakul

  • Year Published: 2019
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, literary, short stories, challenging, reflective, sad, slow-paced
  • Duanwad Pimwana won the 2003 S.E.A Write Award for her novel Changsamran

In thirteen stories that investigate ordinary and working-class Thailand, characters aspire for more but remain suspended in routine. They bide their time, waiting for an extraordinary event to end their stasis. A politician’s wife imagines her life had her husband’s accident been fatal, a man on death row requests that a friend clear up a misunderstanding with a prostitute, and an elevator attendant feels himself wasting away while trapped, immobile, at his station all day.

With curious wit, this collection offers revelatory insight and subtle critique, exploring class, gender, and disenchantment in a changing country.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books published by Tilted Axis Press.

Are you familiar with Tilted Axis Press? If so, I’d love to hear which books you enjoyed from their collection or which books you are excited to read.

Do you know of any other independent publishers like Tilted Axis Press? I’d love to hear all about them in a comment below!

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Five translated modern classic books by women around the world

This month, August, is a chance to celebrate women in translation, specifically women authors who’s works have been translated. There’s so much good translated literature out there. For this month, I’ll be sharing some inspiration from women authors all around the world who have had their work translated into English.

I know a lot of people read works translated from English (or other languages) into their own language. There’s so much important translation work that needs to be done to make works more accessible to the world. But since I only read in English, I’m going to be highlighting works that have been translated into English.

For two weeks, this and last, I want to highlight classic works of literature from around the world that have been translated into English. I’m breaking it into two parts, the first (last week) was from European authors, and this week will be from all around the world.

When I was doing research for these posts, there were far more classics translated from European authors. I guess it’s not much of a surprise, especially with the English-speaking world’s connection with Europe, but it does show a discrepancy in the availability of classics from all areas of the world.

There are numerous reasons why there are far fewer translations from outside of Europe. From colonial impacts encouraged by the delusional belief of Western supremacy, to local cultures or traditions that might have leaned more towards oral storytelling instead of written.

Photo by Jan Mellström on Unsplash

Art lost to history

Whenever I think about the stories and literature lost to time, I’m so saddened by the understanding that there’s so much we’re missing out on. There are so many individuals who had stories to tell or could’ve created incredible works of art that never got the chance due to lack of funds or opportunities. Maybe they were able to create for those around them, those they loved or just for themselves, and maybe that’s enough.

I guess what breaks my heart is that we’ll never have a clear understanding of all people at that time, only those with privilege or power have remained. There are so many perspectives, thoughts, and understandings throughout history that have been lost and now we can only imagine what they might be.

That’s why I think it’s important to seek out different perspectives. There may not be as many translated works from certain areas of the world, but those that exist are valuable and important.

I’ve selected books from all over the world covering Asia, Latin America, and Africa. But this is only a list of five books, so it’s just a tiny selection of all the books out there.

Think of this as a jumping off point, or a source of inspiration to look for more modern classic books in translation from around the world.

Five translated modern classic books by women around the world

Here’s a list of five translated classic books with women authors from around the world.

  1. A Riot of Goldfish / 金魚撩乱 by Kanoko Okamoto / 岡本かの子 (1937)
    Japan
  2. Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral by Gabriela Mistral (1941)
    Chile
  3. Love in a Fallen City / 傾城之戀 by Eileen Chang / 張愛玲 (1946)
    China
  4. Pinjar: The Skeleton and Other Stories / ਪਿੰਜਰ by Amrita Pritam (1950) 
    India
  5. So Long a Letter / Une si longue lettre by Mariama Bâ (1979)
    Senegal

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

A Riot of Goldfish / 金魚撩乱, Kingyo ryōran (1937) – Japan

by Kanoko Okamoto / 岡本かの子,
Translated from the Japanese by J. Keith Vincent

  • Year Published: 1937
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, short stories, lighthearted, reflective, slow-paced
  • Okamoto was an active member of the feminist group Bluestockings (青踏社, Seitōsha)

In early 20th-century Japan, the son of lower-class goldfish sellers falls in love with the beautiful daughter of his rich patron. After he is sent away to study the science of goldfish breeding, with strict orders to return and make his patron’s fortune, he vows to devote his life to producing one ideal, perfect goldfish specimen to reflect his loved-one’s beauty. This poignant and deft tale is presented along with the story of a pauper from Kyoto who teaches himself to be an accomplished chef.

Links:

Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (1941) – Chile

by Gabriela Mistral,
Translated from the Spanish (Chile) by Doris Dana, alternative translations done by Langston Hughes and Ursula Le Guin

  • Year Published: 1941
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, poetry, challenging, emotional, reflective, fast-paced
  • Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature
  • Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga

Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, and her works are among the finest in all contemporary poetry. She is loved and honored throughout the world as one of the great humanistic voices of our time.

This bilingual edition of selected poems was translated and edited by Doris Dana, a close personal friend with whom Gabriela lived and worked with prior to her death in 1957. These translations give a profound insight into the original poetry of this greatest of contemporary Latin American women. They were selected from her four major works ‘Desolación’, ‘Ternura’, ‘Tala’, and ‘Lagar’.

Links:

Love in a Fallen City / 傾城之戀 (1946) – China

by Eileen Chang / 張愛玲,
Translated from the Chinese by Karen S. Kingsbury

  • Year Published: 1946
    English version in 2006
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, short stories, emotional, mysterious, reflective, slow-paced

Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang’s achievement is her short fiction—tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.

Links:

Pinjar: The Skeleton and Other Stories / ਪਿੰਜਰ (1950) – India

by Amrita Pritam
Translated from the Punjabi by Khushwant Singh

  • Year Published: 1950
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, challenging, reflective, slow-paced

Brought together in this volume are two of the most moving novels by one of India’s greatest women writers The Skeleton and The Man. The Skeleton, translated from Punjabi into English by Khushwant Singh, is memorable for its lyrical style and depth in her writing. Amrita Pritam portrays the most inmost being of the novel s complex characters. The Man is a compelling account of a young man born under strange circumstances and abandoned at the altar of God.

Links:

So Long a Letter / Une si longue lettre (1979) – Senegal

by Mariama Bâ,
Translated from the French (Senegal) by Modupé Bodé-Thomas

  • Year Published: 1979
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, literary, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • Focuses on the condition of women in Western African society (post-colonial times)
  • Won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa in 1980

So Long a Letter is a sequence of reminiscences, some wistful, some bitter, recounted by Senegalese school teacher Ramatoulaye, who has recently been widowed. The letter, addressed to her old friend Aissatou, is a record of her emotional struggle for survival after her husband’s abrupt decision to take a second wife. Although sanctioned by Islam, his action is a calculated betrayal of her trust and a brutal rejection of their life together. The novel is a perceptive testimony to the plight of those articulate women who live in social milieux dominated by attitudes and values that deny them their proper place.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of classic translated books written by women from around the world.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. If you have a favourite translated classic book written by a woman, please feel free to share it in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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Five translated books for Pride Month

Photo by Carlos de Toro @carlosdetoro on Unsplash

It’s Pride Month! In honour of celebrating Pride Month, I’ll be sharing some LGBTQIA2S+ book recommendations. Keep checking in each week for more recommendations.

LGBTQIA2S+ = Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Two-Spirit, and plus (anyone who doesn’t fit into one specific category)

Can you believe it’s already June?!

Well here we are, almost halfway through the year. That means it’s time for Pride Month!

I know in the past few years there’s been a heavy focus on “rainbow capitalism” and how corporations put on such a display for Pride Month. It’s obvious that most corporations are only participating in Pride Month as a marketing strategy. But that doesn’t negate the importance of this month.

Pride is an annual recognition of the Stonewall Riots, which marked a significant turning point in LGBTQIA2S+ rights in North America.

Pride started out as a riot and an act of resistance. We don’t want to lose that part of its history.

They were fighting for their human rights, and for others to better understand their humanity.

Around the world

Around the world, LGBTQIA2S+ individuals are still fighting for their rights. Each country has their own history and political climate around LGBTQIA2S+ rights, but all of our rights (and the fights for those rights) are interconnected and dependent on each other.

I believe one of the greatest ways we can improve the world is by having empathy and understanding each others’ experiences. The more we can accept others in all their humanity, the better we are able to listen and support them.

One of the easiest ways to learn about other people’s experiences is to listen to them talk about it. This can be through any kind of media; books, movies, social media, etc. or of course, in person.

Books are a great way to experience the world from a different perspective. Every time you read a book you are seeing the world from the characters’ perspective and getting immersed in their lives. What a great way to see the full spectrum of their humanity; all their feelings, their mistakes, their triumphs, their relationships, and everything else.

These five books are a great way to experience different perspectives of gender, of sexuality, of language, and of culture.

Each of these books are unique and come with an opportunity to learn something new from each.

Five translated books for Pride Month

Here’s a list of five books that have been translated to English and are great to read during Pride Month.

  1. Sphinx by Anne Garréta (1986)
    translated from the French by Emma Ramadan
  2. Notes of a Crocodile / 鱷魚手記 by Qiu Miaojin / 邱妙津 (1994)
    translated from the Chinese (Taiwan) by Bonnie Huie
  3. The Membranes / 膜 by Chi Ta-Wei / 紀大偉 (1995)
    translated from the Chinese (Taiwan) by Ari Larissa Heinrich
  4. A Country for Dying / Un pays pour mourir by Abdellah Taïa (2015)
    translated from the French by Emma Ramadan
  5. Tentacle / La mucama de Omicunlé by Rita Indiana (2015)
    translated from the Spanish (Dominican) by Achy Obejas

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published

Sphinx (1986)

by Anne Garréta, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan

  • Year Published: 1986
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, lgbtqia+, literary, challenging, informative, reflective, slow-paced
  • Written without any gender markers or pronouns

A landmark literary event: the first novel by a female member of Oulipo in English, a sexy genderless love story.

Sphinx is the remarkable debut novel, originally published in 1986, by the incredibly talented and inventive French author Anne Garréta, one of the few female members of Oulipo, the influential and exclusive French experimental literary group whose mission is to create literature based on mathematical and linguistic restraints, and whose ranks include Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, among others.

A beautiful and complex love story between two characters, the narrator, “I,” and their lover, A***, written without using any gender markers to refer to the main characters, Sphinx is a remarkable linguistic feat and paragon of experimental literature that has never been accomplished before or since in the strictly-gendered French language.

Sphinx is a landmark text in the feminist, LGBT, and experimental literary canons appearing in English for the first time.

Links:

Notes of a Crocodile / 鱷魚手記 (1994)

by Qiu Miaojin (邱妙津), translated from the Chinese (Taiwan) by Bonnie Huie

  • Year Published: 1994 (English version in 2017)
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, lgbtqia+, literary, dark, emotional, reflective, medium-paced
  • Qiu Miaojin was posthumously awarded the China Times Literature Award in 1995 for this book

Set in the post-martial-law era of late 1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan’s most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, Qiu Miaojin’s cult classic novel is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and countercultural icon.

Links:

The Membranes / 膜 (1995)

by Chi Ta-Wei (紀大偉), translated from the Chinese (Taiwan) by Ari Larissa Heinrich

  • Year Published: 1995
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, lgbtqia+, science fiction, speculative fiction, dark, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • Classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese

It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.

First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes–heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies–into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader’s own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation brings Chi’s hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

Links:

A Country for Dying / Un pays pour mourir (2015)

by Abdellah Taïa, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan

  • Year Published: 2015
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction. lgbtqia+, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • Written by Morocco’s first openly gay writer

An exquisite novel of North Africans in Paris by one of the most original and necessary voices in world literature

Paris, Summer 2010.

Zahira is 40 years old, Moroccan, a prostitute, traumatized by her father’s suicide decades prior, and in love with a man who no longer loves her.

Zannouba, Zahira’s friend and protege, formerly known as Aziz, prepares for gender confirmation surgery and reflects on the reoccuring trauma of loss, including the loss of her pre-transition male persona.

Mojtaba is a gay Iranian revolutionary who, having fled to Paris, seeks refuge with Zahira for the month of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, Allal, Zahira’s first love back in Morocco, travels to Paris to find Zahira.

Through swirling, perpendicular narratives,

A Country for Dying follows the inner lives of emigrants as they contend with the space between their dreams and their realities, a schism of a postcolonial world where, as Ta a writes, So many people find themselves in the same situation. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people’s future.

Links:

Tentacle / La mucama de Omicunlé (2015)

by Rita Indiana, translated from the Spanish (Dominican) by Achy Obejas

  • Year Published: 2015
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, lgbtqia+, science fiction, adventurous, challenging, medium-paced
  • Experimental science fiction that deals with questions of race, gender, and environmental change

Plucked from her life on the streets of post-apocalyptic Santo Domingo, young maid Acilde Figueroa finds herself at the heart of a Santería prophecy: only she can travel back in time and save the ocean – and humanity – from disaster. But first she must become the man she always was – with the help of a sacred anemone. Tentacle is an electric novel with a big appetite and a brave vision, plunging headfirst into questions of climate change, technology, Yoruba ritual, queer politics, poverty, sex, colonialism and contemporary art. Bursting with punk energy and lyricism, it’s a restless, addictive trip: The Tempest meets the telenovela.

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Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. I’d love to know which books you love or that you would recommend. Let me know in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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Five sci-fi/fantasy books inspired by Chinese history

May is Asian and Pacific Islander heritage month! So for this month I’m going to share reading recommendations from across Asia and the Pacific Islands.

I love this part of the world and I’m excited to be sharing books from here. I think books are a great way to gain insight into peoples’ lives and their culture. You may not be able to travel or live everywhere you’re interested in, but you can definitely read books from anywhere in the world.

China has a long history, specifically a long written history. The oldest written records are about 3,500 years old!

This is by no means unique, there are other countries with thousands of years of history (i.e., Egypt and Mesopotamia).

But with such a long, recorded history, there is plenty of inspiration for authors to pull from.

These new books inspired by Chinese history are similar to the resurgence of Greek myth retellings, which allow for a fresh take by telling the story from the women’s point of view or highlighting characters previously seen as peripheral. I’m currently loving the fresh perspectives of stories inspired by Chinese history.

I love how women and nonbinary authors are finally being offered publishing deals to tell these diverse stories that draw inspiration from China, but are centering women, nonbinary, gender non-conforming individuals, and various types of relationships.

I find it fascinating to see how modern day issues, like gender, can be explored through a historical setting. For instance, in She Who Becomes the Sun the main character takes on her brother’s name and poses as a boy to seek refuge at a monastery. I think it shows that these ideas are nothing new, that the concepts are rarely black and white, and they’ve always played a role in our lives.

Personally, I love seeing diverse authors finding their voice and being recognized for their creativity. I love that different cultures and histories are becoming more widely recognized, accepted, and seen as valuable.

I find that being able to read from a variety of perspectives opens us up to more interesting stories. I sometimes struggle to read classics by old white men because their women characters often lack depth and I get tired of only reading about men.

I think classics have value in that they reflect the era they came from. But it makes me wonder how many fascinating stories we no longer have because they were not deemed valuable at the time or the storyteller had no means to write/publish the stories.

At least now more diverse voices are being offered a platform, and for everyone else there’s always the opportunity to self-publish online.

Photo by Kayla Kozlowski on Unsplash

Five sci-fi/fantasy books inspired by Chinese history

Here’s a list of five books with authors inspired by Chinese history or cultural stories.

  1. Strange Beasts of China/异兽志 (2006)
  2. The Poppy War (2018)
  3. The Empress of Salt and Fortune (2020)
  4. Iron Widow (2021)
  5. She Who Became the Sun (2021)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

Strange Beasts of China/异兽志 (2006)

by Yan Ge (颜歌), translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Jeremy Tiang

  • Year Published: 2006
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, contemporary, fantasy, literary, dark, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • Translated version published in 2021 through Tilted Axis press

From one of the most exciting voices in contemporary Chinese literature, an uncanny and playful novel that blurs the line between human and beast …

In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness—save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes, and strange birthmarks.

Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast, and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self.

Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China engages existential questions of identity, humanity, love and morality with whimsy and stylistic verve.

Links:

The Poppy War (2018)

by R.F. Kuang

  • Year Published: 2018
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, fantasy, historical, adventurous, dark, tense, medium-paced
  • R.F. Kuang’s first novel

An epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic.

When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.

But surprises aren’t always good.

Links:

The Empress of Salt and Fortune (2020)

by Nghi Vo

  • Year Published: 2020
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, fantasy, lgbtqia+, emotional, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • First book published in the Singing Hills Cycle – but the books can be read in any order

A young royal from the far north is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.

Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor’s lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.

At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She’s a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.

Links:

Iron Widow (2021)

by Xiran Jay Zhao (they/them)

  • Year Published: 2021
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, fantasy, lgbtqia+, science fiction, young adult, adventurous, dark, tense, fast-paced
  • New York Times Bet Seller and Hugo-award-disqualified (due to political censorship) author

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.

When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But it doesn’t go quite as she expects.

Links:

She Who Became the Sun (2021)

by Shelley Parker-Chan (they/them)

  • Year Published: 2021
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, fantasy, historical, lgbtqia+, adventurous, dark, tense, medium-paced
  • Won both the Best Novel and Best Newcomer awards at the British Fantasy Awards

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu uses the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother’s abandoned greatness.

Mulan meets The Song of Achilles; an accomplished, poetic debut of war and destiny, sweeping across an epic alternate China.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. I’d love to know which books you love or that you would recommend. Let me know in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

Posted on

The perfect protective membrane

Excerpt from The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei

Photo by Ryan Loughlin on Unsplash

This is an excerpt from the book The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei, translated from the Chinese by Ari Larissa Heinrich.

The ocean made a perfect protective membrane, a thick, robust barrier that could shield humans, animals, and plants from ultraviolet radiation.

Plus, the ocean was the primordial birthplace of all earth’s plants and animals. Back when there was no life on land, it was the ocean that generated the earliest vegetation, and the ocean that eventually produced our most primitive ancestors, These earliest plants and animals evolved in water because sunlight was lethal; the ozone layer had not yet formed. Only when the collective gases exhaled by the denizens of the ocean had reached a critical mass and erupted through the surface and into the atmosphere was the radiation-filtering protective layer formed. And only under the shelter of this newly formed barrier could the first brave organisms crawl to the shore and withstand the assault of sunlight on their vulnerable bodies.

who could have imagined that eons later, in the twenty-first century, they would return to their old ocean home?

But humans, unlike fish or shrimp, were not designed to swim, so it would be necessary to build subaquatic cities. Fortunately, the ocean was abundant with natural resources, and with the right adjustments the sea floor could be adapted for human habitation. Not only that, but the technology for harnessing solar power was improving by the day and could now be used to convert great quantities of energy collected aboveground for use on the ocean floor. Since the sun had forced humanity back into the ocean, it was only fair that humanity took some of its power in return.

But the middle of the twenty-first century there was little habitable land left, and humankind finally invaded the oceans en masse, a process euphemistically referred to as “migration.” During the process of “reclaiming wasteland,” new reserves of crude oil were discovered one after another. This accelerated the rate of underwater construction, which in turn provided a solution to the problem of high unemployment, a surprise benefit of migration to the ocean floor! With great “humanity,” they told themselves, humankind “rescued” all manner of favored flora and fauna by bringing them them along to the bottom of the sea. This time, of course they made sure not to bring cockroaches and mosquitoes, but they also left behind many critical organisms, Waves of human settlers inevitably led to the ecological devastation of the ocean floor, but people felt they’d done their best to act humanely. Don’t blame us, they thought, we did the best we could.

By 2060, the majority of humanity had migrated to the ocean, with only one percent left to eke out a living on the surface. Pretty much all the main infrastructure of human civilization had migrated to the ocean floor, including industrial agriculture and animal husbandry. All that remained aboveground were those historical sites too large to be moved—the pyramids, for example, or the February 28th Incident Memorial Plaques ubiquitous on the island of Taiwan—tough archeologist and tourists still visited the surface. The new sea dwellers also left behind unwanted structures like pollution producing factories and nuclear power plants (which meant, however, that some key personnel were forced to remain on the surface to man the reactors). Also abandoned were prisons and various tools of punishment, since governments universally recognized that leaving convicts on the surface was actually a convenient punishment in and of itself. (Let them burn—who needed the electric chair!)

The earth’s surface, which had once struggled to bear the burden of overpopulation, was now almost completely deserted. Though even now humankind proved reluctant to surrender the legacy of its battles for power, still everything—everything—on the surface of the earth went the way of the Great Wall off China To think that these ambitious marvels of engineering built on the backs of the common people, wound up the playthings of the tourism industry! Their majesty was reduced to an absurd footnotes.

But new man-made landscapes were also propagated on the surface, These new landscapes would have been inconceivable to the people who came before: more extravagant than works by the twentieth-century environmental artist Christo, but also more practical. For example, there were the metastasizing “fields” of solar panel arrays stretching as far as the eye could see, used to harvest solar power for the population under the ocean.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

The Membranes – Summary

It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.

First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes–heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies–into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader’s own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation brings Chi’s hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

Copyright © 1995 by Chi Ta-Wei.

Translated from the Chinese by: Ari Larissa Heinrich

You can find more details here on Goodreads and on StoryGraph.

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