World Literature Today最新文献

{"title":"A Violin from the Other Riverside by Dmytro Kremin (review)","authors":"Nicole Yurcaba","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910278","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910278","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: A Violin from the Other Riverside by Dmytro Kremin Nicole Yurcaba DMYTRO KREMIN A Violin from the Other Riverside Trans. Svetlana Lavochkina. Liberty Lake, Washington. Lost Horse Press. 2023. 215 pages. DMYTRO KREMIN'S A Violin from the Other Riverside arrives in a dual-language edition at a critical time in Ukrainian history and the Ukrainian language. Described as a \"philosophical bow strung with a Ukrainian timeline arrow,\" its timeline spans some of the most forgotten eras in Ukrainian and European history. From the Pontic steppes to Scythia, ancient Greece, Rome, and into the modern era when Russian occupiers illegally enter Ukraine's territory, these passionate poems guide readers through epics and dramas both universal and personal with wise notes that illuminate Ukraine's current struggle for independence. \"Elegy of the Years on Fire\" alludes to the 2014 Maidan events that set the political stage for the 2022 invasion. Opening with the stark, prophetic line \"When Kyiv is beset with guns and smoke,\" the poem segues into images rife with war. \"Blood-spattered mists\" hang heavily, and the poem's speaker stands in disbelief, weighed down by a soul \"filled with longing.\" However, the Ukrainian resilience that, for nearly two years, has awed the globe is fully displayed in one of the poem's most memorable stanzas. In it, the concept of victory becomes a \"last frontier,\" where pagan gods like Perun and Striborg abide among modern mortals. The mythical pagan gods are not the only Ukrainian historical figures invited into Kremin's verses. The famous outlaw Oleksa Dovbush, a folk hero often compared to Robin Hood, finds his place in \"A Carpathian Souvenir.\" The speaker declares that Dovbush \"is no more\" and that \"no one like him will ever live.\" Dovbush's passing, however, is more than the death of a revered folk hero. Kremin portrays it as a catalyst, one that spurs the irreversible trend of cultural erasure, particularly for the Hutsuls. Their cultural and artistic remnants become cheap commodities in a society which does not understand or appreciate the remnants' significance. The speaker laments: The eagles flew into all shops,perched on the shelves in every teahouse, every inn,They carried prison smells on their wings,Which stretched from hamlets to our metropolis.The whining of a two-man saw, the screeching of an axLived in the genes of pines and beeches.And those were trees without age rings . . . As the poem continues, the speaker captures other snippets of the persecution of Ukrainian culture and language. Other historical figures like bard Ihor Bilozir, a renowned Ukrainian singer and composer fatally wounded for singing in Ukrainian, also appear. The speaker portrays Bilozir's persecution bluntly: Blood circulates in names and words.Bard Ihor Bilozir was murderedFor singing in Ukrainian.The eagle squawks . . . It went as far as Lviv. For readers unfamiliar with Ukrainian geography and politics, Lviv—the largest city in weste","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"146 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135161324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Corrected Version by Rosanna Young Oh (review)","authors":"Schneider K. Rancy","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910292","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: The Corrected Version by Rosanna Young Oh Schneider K. Rancy Rosanna Young Oh The Corrected Version Richmond, Virginia. Diode Editions. 2023. 68 pages. ROSANNA YOUNG OH'S debut collection, The Corrected Version, is multiheaded in its origins and reflections. These poems descend with unflinching eye to feast on the personal and the vulnerable, and through this prism explore the wider contradictions with which a writer of diaspora must grapple. The poems of The Corrected Version are ones of departure and stranding, and consequent metaphysical longing. In a collection that abounds with transportations to faraway landscapes and with Korean mythos, the author's parents and familial figures are lodestones to understanding the frustrations of immigration. Tellingly, in \"Erasures,\" she writes of her father: \"his favorite story is the myth of Odysseus\" and \"Maybe he's erased too much of himself / in his pursuit of a 'life.'\" These tensions between the folklore of homeland—a heroic mythos of cultural identity—and the disillusionment of American reality, weighed down by working-class industrialism, are palpable. In \"Chrysanthemums,\" Chŏngju's reverent appraising of the flower is robbed of its beauty in its American context at a respected elder's funeral: \"Around them, / the chrysanthemums / waxed for the man / who sold them / door-to-door for more / than half his life.\" Likewise, in \"Picking Blueberries,\" the manual and existential labor of sorting rotten from salvageable blueberries for reselling at the family store is coolly summarized: \"How, how to price them? $3.99 per pint.\" The reader, however, is left with the undeniable impression of how incalculable it is the way the berries burst when squeezed between forefinger and thumb. Visceral imagery of fruits, plants, and grocery store items haunt the reader throughout this collection like ghosts of the author's childhood, brimming in the aisles of her parents' grocery store. The dripping cut watermelon in \"Scene with Watermelon from Hokusai\" is a reference to the still life by the Japanese painter, but this flora is also one of the many windows through which Oh understands the American landscape as shaped through the economic conditions of her upbringing. The visions are gripping: in \"The Gift,\" the father, hunched wet-eyed and wet-mouthed over the garbage can eating \"a Haitian mango: / all muscle brindled with black and bruises,\" or the vision of impaled oranges and smashed cantaloupes; the dutiful immigrant daughter \"clacking at the register, / the tips of [her] latex gloves black / from rubbing coins and dollar bills\"; or the exhilarating and freeing litany of \"Creation Narrative,\" naming the very inventory of fruits, vegetables, and plants that constructs the speaker's recent past and identity. But Oh makes it clear: the grocery store is at once childhood paradise and purgatory. Glimpses of punitive xenophobic disparagements run as a whispered undercurrent, the way a child hiding under the","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"151 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135161443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Retrospective: A Novel by Juan Gabriel Vásquez (review)","authors":"Andrew Martino","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910288","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Retrospective: A Novel by Juan Gabriel Vásquez Andrew Martino JUAN GABRIEL VÁSQUEZ Retrospective: A Novel Trans. Anne McLean. New York. Riverhead Books. 2023. 436 pages. ANNE MCLEAN'S ENGLISH translation of Retrospective, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, is a masterpiece in literary translation. Not only should we be thankful for McLean's ability, which seems supernatural, to bring this remarkable novel across the linguistic frontier, we should also be thankful for her careful attention to the linguistic sensibilities of the original. McLean's relationship with Vásquez and his work is one that has helped us understand Vásquez's entire literary project in English. I suspect that with the English translation of Retrospective, Vásquez's reputation as one of our greatest living writers is firmly established. He may very well be the heir to the great Javier Marías. Retrospective is a fictional biography of Colombian filmmaker Sergio Cabrera. Cabrera and Vásquez enjoy a friendship that goes back years, and this book is the culmination of a seven-year conversation. Told in three parts, the novel begins with the death of Cabrera's father, Fausto, an actor, at the age of ninety-two while Sergio is in Lisbon getting ready to leave for Barcelona to attend a retrospective of his own films. Organized by Filmoteca de Catalunya, the retrospective will be the first of its kind for Cabrera. Accompanying Sergio is his son, Raúl. As the book opens, Sergio's marriage is failing, and he and his wife are living separate lives. Sergio's daughter stays behind in Lisbon with her mother, setting up a narrative that anticipates a father-son bonding experience. This is explored in part, but Retrospective turns out to be so much more that a father telling his son the history of their family. The first part, \"Encounter in Barcelona,\" mostly depicts Fausto's life, his marriage, and the birth of his two children. Fausto's early experience in reciting poems paves the way for his acting life. But more [End Page 72] than that, it paves the way for Fausto to \"act\" in several parts throughout his life, such as husband, father, actor, and rebel, thus forming and manipulating the lives of his children. The second part covers the lives of Sergio and his sister in China, slowly being indoctrinated by Mao's revolution. It's in the second part where the bulk of the story takes place. There is a transient aspect to both siblings' lives. Both are cut off from their parents as well as set apart from those who live with and around them. The third part tells of the family's efforts in Colombia as revolutionaries. There is a section in the third part that could very well sum up the entire narrative: \"So this was also one of the war zones, he thought. Bogotá was like that: a person walked along distracted, thinking their own thoughts, and on any corner the violent history of the country could jump out and hit them in the face.\" What Retrospective tells us is that life is a war zone, simulta","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"149 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135161453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Júnior (review)","authors":"Cristina Pinto-Bailey","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910284","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Júnior Cristina Pinto-Bailey ITAMAR VIEIRA JÚNIOR Crooked Plow Trans. Johnny Lorenz. London. Verso. 2023. 276 pages. THE AWARD-WINNING Crooked Plow is a family saga set in the sertão, or backlands, of Brazil's State of Bahia, an area that since colonial times has been home to large plantations, while its laborers have been subjected to the violence and exploitation of slavery and its enduring legacy. The novel's protagonists, the sisters Bibiana and Belonísia, live with their family in such a plantation, the Fazenda Água Negra, among other Black workers. They are quilombolas, or descendants of those who had built and lived in the Quilombos, the communities of enslaved people escaped from captivity, \"a strong people who'd been wrested from their land, who'd crossed an ocean, who'd left their dreams behind and forged in exile a life that was new and luminous. The people who made it through, withstanding the cruelty of their treatment.\" The narrative revolves around Bibiana and Belonísia, their parents, grandmother, and a mysterious knife that changes the sisters' lives forever. The parents enjoy some relative distinction in the community, for the father is a healer, spiritual leader, and often serves as a mediator between the plantation overseer and the workers. Nevertheless, the family lives in the same situation of de facto slavery as the others: they labor from dawn to dusk on the whites' land, live in mud shacks, and may easily have their meager subsistence crops taken away by the bosses. Against this backdrop of abuses and injustices, the narrative highlights the redoubled oppression of women, whose imposed silence and efforts to speak out are epitomized in the horrible incident Bibiana and Belonísia survive early in the narrative. Translated into more than ten languages, Crooked Plow has received wide acclaim, both for its poignant story of social struggles and for the empathetic depiction of the quilombolas' lives and traditions. Also remarkable is its vivid imagery and the colorful vocabulary typical of Brazil's Northeast. These are aptly maintained in Johnny Lorenz's excellent translation, which employs various Portuguese words and expressions present in the original, thus avoiding unwieldy footnotes or glossaries while offering English-language readers a taste for the distinct language of the Brazilian sertão. Cristina Pinto-Bailey Lexington, Virginia Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"144 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135161195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women ed. by Sandra Guzmán (review)","authors":"Tess O'Dwyer","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910283","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910283","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women ed. by Sandra Guzmán Tess O'Dwyer Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women Ed. Sandra Guzmán New York. HarperCollins. 2023. 559 pages. Words are medicine. Medicine is breath. I cure with language, nothing more. —María Sabina AMBITIOUS, AUDACIOUS, and teeming with talent, Daughters of Latin America highlights the vast and varied collective genius of women writers from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the diaspora. The collection spans five hundred years of literature by more than one hundred women from thirty-four nations. There are spirited translations from twenty-one languages, including seventeen mother tongues of the Americas such as Mazatec, Kʼicheʼ, and Kaqchikel. In a lively introduction about the powers of ancestral traditions and the promise of matriarchy, Sandra Guzmán graciously tips her hat to other groundbreaking anthologies that shaped her editorial strategies: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981), edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa; New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent (2019), edited by Margaret Busby; and When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020), edited by Joy Harjo. What these books have in common is how tenacious, radical, and successful they are in their drive to revolutionize literary canons in celebration of extraordinary virtuosity and diversity. They offer mind-expanding material and create greater opportunities not only for those featured within the covers but for countless other writers of the traditions and perspectives that they champion. Daughters of Latin America is comprised of thirteen sections, signifying the thirteen Mayan moons. This poetic structure allows Guzmán to bypass the usual organizing principles of an anthology (i.e., chronology, geography, literary movement, language, or genre) and to create, instead, one surprising and delightful juxtaposition after another. There are shaman chants, breezy wishes, ethereal blessings, acerbic song lyrics, and desperate supplications. There are wrenching accounts of abduction, torture, indoctrination, rape, domestic violence, and murder. There are fascinating letters, starting with the famous \"Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz,\" by the master of irony Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, as well as an intimate love letter from Gabriela Mistral to her partner Doris Dana, and a chatty life update from Julia de Burgos to her sister Consuelo. There are fiery political pieces, including a scathing speech against misogyny by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a jolting political farce about the inanities of the Trump era by Giannina Braschi. [End Page 68] There are beautifully written odes to everyday things, such as \"Ode to the Hair Clip,\" by Ada Limón; \"Umbilicus,\" by Nelly Rosario; an","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"147 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135161322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop (review)","authors":"Daniel Bokemper","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910268","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop Daniel Bokemper DAVID DIOP Beyond the Door of No Return Trans. Sam Taylor. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2023. 256 pages. REGRET IS A FORCE that changes us. It immerses us in melancholy and begs questions, without answers, about what could've been. This is what lies Beyond the Door of No Return, the latest novel from Booker Prize winner David Diop. While less bleak than At Night All Blood Is Black (WLT, Spring 2021, 97), Beyond is no less poignant. It's part odyssey, part tragic romance, and entirely topical despite its historic setting. Beyond examines the late stages of slavery in West Africa through the memoir of a French botanist, Michel Adanson. After his death, he wills his entire estate to his mostly estranged daughter, Aglaé. After finding a secret compartment in one of her father's drawers, she discovers a portfolio addressed to her. Within it is Michel's entire account of the woman whose name he muttered on his deathbed: Maram. Most of the novel traces Michel's three-year excursion in the Republic of Senegal. And though Michel is a mostly unassuming botanist, Diop doesn't diminish how the character enables the slave trade. Michel may envision himself a white savior by his disdain for slavery, but it's made abundantly clear his craft only serves to perpetuate a misanthropic system. Diop is also adept at weaving myth into realistic fiction. Ritual and superstition follow every step of Michel's journey. With each new revelation, the scientist deconstructs his rigid boundaries in his secret pursuit of a lost girl and snakeskin-wearing mystic. Beyond's biggest mystery is unraveled quickly, but in doing so, Diop reframes our understanding of the story. In other words, the voyage across the savannah shifts inward and travels further than any physical journey could possibly go. The author's prose—and, by extension, Sam Taylor's excellent translation—mixes vivid metaphor with direct action. Violence is conveyed as it should be: jarring, uncomfortable, and permeant. It lingers like a stench that's only subdued by Diop's magical descriptions of passion and longing. Beyond's conclusion is harrowing and beautiful but persists a bit further than necessary. It may resonate more in a later read (which all of Diop's novels demand), though it still feels like the parallel the writer draws out is exactly that—overextended. At the same time, it could be seen as a stark reminder of how, no matter the tragedy that befalls us, life persists uncaged. Beyond the Door of No Return is a welcome predecessor to an inevitable masterpiece. It reveals an unseen side of Diop's storytelling and, in doing so, justifies the risk of untamed love. [End Page 56] Daniel Bokemper Oklahoma City Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"146 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135161328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hanging between Two Different Worlds: A Conversation with Ahmed Naji","authors":"Rob Roensch","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910257","url":null,"abstract":"Hanging between Two Different WorldsA Conversation with Ahmed Naji Rob Roensch (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution In February 2016, after the publication of his energetic, imaginative, Cairoset novel, Using Life, Ahmed Naji became the first writer in Egyptian history to be imprisoned for \"offending public morality,\" for erotic scenes in Using Life. Then he found himself in prison, sharing cells with high-profile political activists, and the experience deepened his commitment to literature. In 2016 he received the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award. His new book, Rotten Evidence (McSweeney's, 2023), translated by Katharine Halls, is a chronicle of his incarceration that confounds the expectations of a prison memoir. In this interview, Naji discusses Rotten Evidence, the responsibility of writers to defend free expression, and the roles of dreams and humor in prison life. Rob Roensch: Could you talk a bit about the genesis of Rotten Evidence? Ahmed Naji: In the beginning, I didn't want to write about it. In general, I'm not a big fan of prison literature. I have a lot of moral and artistic questions about the meaning of writing about experience in a prison. But at the same time I was looking around, and I was surprised to not find any books written about the situation of current prisons in Egypt, which was very odd because in the last century in Egyptian history, prison literature was a big part of the map of Arab and Egyptian literature. However, in the last decade or two, because of the effect of social media, a lot of people who leave prison, rather than writing a book, they will write a synopsis, update their Facebook status, and just end there because you will take this emotional charge from inside them and that's it. The second thing I noticed is how human rights organizations are pushing toward testimony. So, rather than prison literature or writing about prison, we end up with all these human rights testimonies. The problem with human rights testimony is that it's dealing with you as a victim. It doesn't care about any other aspect of life like family life or love. Love is not human rights, as we all know, so you aren't allowed to speak about that. In your human rights testimony you are just a fact talking about suffering, and I thought the experience is more complicated and harder than that. Roensch: You've noted that many prison stories seem to be mainly about suffering [End Page 33] and human rights testimony. But your book is very funny. So I wonder if you could talk a bit more why humor is important for you as a writer, and the relationship of humor to solemn subjects like prison. Naji: I believe the highest literature is if I'm reading a book and it makes me laugh, not smile, but laugh. I believe this is a hard thing to achieve through writing. Making the reader cry, or feel sympathy, it's easy. It would be easy for me to write such a book in a melodramatic tone, and suck up to the reader's empathy. Like, \"Oh! I have been","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"145 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135161329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Places We Left Behind: A Memoir-in-Miniature by Jennifer Lang (review)","authors":"Liz Chang","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910295","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Places We Left Behind: A Memoir-in-Miniature by Jennifer Lang Liz Chang JENNIFER LANG Places We Left Behind: A Memoir-in-Miniature Athens. Vine Leaves Press. 2023. 160 pages. JENNIFER LANG'S memoir-in-miniature, Places We Left Behind, is a palimpsest of time and space mapped across the end of the twentieth century and global conflicts in the Middle East. It opens \"[a]fter making love in . . . mismatched sheets,\" and that phrase truly enfolds the essence of the entire work, which traces the development of a transcultural romance in Israel, France, and the United States. Throughout, Lang juxtaposes visual elements and a sprinkling of Hebrew—which has its own powerfully calligraphic quality—with stricken-through lines to push readers forward and backward in time. The rational side of the narrator interrupts her more romantic musings, even as the '\"voice of experience\" revises the couple's history in real time. There's an intensity to this work that pulls the reader through these decades and places as if we are collectively riding on a telescoping kaleidoscope. Footnotes and translations provided on some of the more traditional Jewish customs feel embedded for the reader, but they also appear for the evolving narrator's benefit. Lang writes, \"I married this place as much as I married this person.\" After her son is born, the world seems brighter, coinciding with the history-making moment as Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO leader Yasser Arafat shake hands on TV. The young family moves to Paris for her husband's master's program, adding a layer of francophone charm. They decamp to California, then New York. In an insight that echoes the title, Lang finally admits, \"No matter where we reside, one of us will always rue the loss of the place we left behind.\" This memoir traces the journey to find an authentic self inside the layers of various identities—parenthood, loving relationships, loyalty to one's origin—as improbable as that may seem, and the path that each of us embarks upon, crisscrossing a desert of unknowing to (hopefully) at last arrive in the Promised Land. [End Page 78] Liz Chang Philadelphia Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"151 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135161637","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Artists of Iraqi Descent Celebrate Roots and Global Belonging","authors":"Shakir Mustafa","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910251","url":null,"abstract":"Artists of Iraqi Descent Celebrate Roots and Global Belonging Shakir Mustafa (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Maysaloun Faraj, HOME 10, acrylic on paper, 24 x 18cm, London, 27 March 2020 [End Page 15] Four artists of Iraqi descent are achieving global recognition for their paintings and handbag design. Both proud of their culture of origin and open to resources beyond national designations, these four artists are reckoning with vibrant identity issues. The careers of four artists of Iraqi descent recently witnessed significant events. One American, Maysaloun Faraj, and three Europeans see these events as defining moments to reflect on roots and belonging to a global culture. Two of the artists are British painters, Suad Al-Attar and Athier Mousawi, and one is Italian, Hussain Harba, a world-class designer of women's handbags and novelty furniture items. All four are well established, with works and products in world museums and in private collections. Faraj had a solo exhibition in Paris in 2022, and Al-Attar's granddaughter, Nesma Shubber, published a book on her grandmother's life and art, Suad Al-Attar (Heni, 2022). In April 2023 Harba won the Industrial Compass Award, one of Europe's prestigious design prizes. The youngest of the group, Mousawi had a solo exhibit last June in the arts hub Cromwell Place in central London. With roots in the Middle East, Paris, Los Angeles, and London, these artists showcase facets of a fascinating global art scene. Undoubtedly, cultural interactions impact individual and collective identities, and that clearly shows in the artists' works. Achieving recognition in a global setting with intense professional and ideological contentions requires openness to influences. Although all four artists show pride in their culture of origin, they make their mark due to embracing artistic resources well beyond national designations. A closer look at Faraj's and Al-Attar's books, and Harba's and Mousawi's recent works, illustrates an intriguing reckoning with vibrant identity issues. Click for larger view View full resolution Maysaloun Faraj in her London studio. Maysaloun Faraj: Art and Social Media Faraj's solo exhibition in Paris in June 2022 was at the Mark Hachem Gallery, with a companion catalog. Maysaloun Faraj: HOME Lockdown, 2020–2022 is richly illustrated, and it comes in numbered copies signed by the artist. Based on works done during the sheltering in place due to Covid-19, the paintings appeared on a group Facebook site dedicated to making home a subject for drawings and paintings. For an international community facing a global pandemic, the social media platform turned home into a locale for scrutinizing issues of belonging to a certain place and the possibilities of creating communal connections beyond that space. Started by Faraj herself, the Facebook platform also demonstrates the effects of one artist's engagement with communal responsibilities. In dozens of small and large paintings, Faraj ","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"143 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135160987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Petit traité du racisme en Amérique by Dany Laferriére (review)","authors":"Edward Ousselin","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910271","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Petit traité du racisme en Amérique by Dany Laferriére Edward Ousselin DANY LAFERRIÈRE Petit traité du racisme en Amérique Paris. Grasset. 2023. 256 pages. BORN IN HAITI in 1953, Dany Laferrière has been living abroad since 1976, mostly in Quebec, but also in Florida and in France. His first novel, How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired (Laferrière favors provocative titles), was published in 1985. Some of his books, all written in French, have been translated into English (his personal account of the massive earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010 was reviewed in the May 2013 issue of WLT). Others have been adapted into films (e.g., Heading South, directed by Laurent Cantet in 2005). In 2013 Laferrière became a member of the Académie française. After fourteen novels, mainly addressing topics related to identity and exile, his Petit traité du racisme en Amérique (Short treatise on racism in America) is his first book on the issue of racism. Dedicated to Bessie Smith, it is obviously influenced by the recent series of documented cases of African Americans who were murdered by white police officers, of which the best-known case is Derek Chauvin suffocating George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nearly ten minutes. Instead of a structured essay, this book offers a sort of kaleidoscopic arrangement of short texts, some in prose, some in a poetic format reminiscent of haikus (in 2008 Laferrière published a novel entitled I Am a Japanese Writer). Each section of the Petit traité, however short, has its own title. By way of illustration, here is a sampling of these titles: Le mot Nègre; La vie de l'autre; Blanc contre Noir; Le sentiment d'infériorité; La rage en Amérique; 9 min 29; La gloire d'Eleanor; L'afro d'Angela Davis; Langston Hughes à Port-au-Prince; Toni Morrison et Maya Angelou; Le Noir a peur du noir; Martin Luther King et René Lévesque. Laferrière's purpose in this book is not to provide a detailed accounting of all the recent deaths caused by racism. In a section entitled \"L'esprit du livre,\" he explains that he seeks to bring out the human \"flesh and pain\" that lies within \"the tragedy that is racism\" and to point out that in each case, it is \"a human being who was killed . . . and not a concept.\" His investigation of racism in America is more literary and psychological than historical or sociological. He points out that, due to his background as a Haitian exile living in Quebec and writing in French, his approach is somewhat different from that of other Black men and women who grew up in the United States. He also states that he is quite conscious of the levels of racism that exist in Canada or in France. He chose to write about America because of what he calls the \"weight of numbers,\" or the fact that the number of African Americans is higher than the total population of Canada. In the United States, where the descendants of slaves live among the descendants of slave-owners, the historical legacy of slavery and the","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"143 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135160988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}