Respecting the Diversity of Creativity
Kindred
, was published in the United States. The novel tells of a young African-American woman living in California in 1976 who travels back and forth through time. Toggling between 1976 and the years preceding the Civil War, she gives us a fresh look at the brutal racism of the American South. It’s a landmark novel that defies categorization and provides a complex and deeply moving historical account, drawing connections between past and present and stimulating reflection on, among other things, our notions of race, family, and identity. Nevertheless, it was not until 2000 twenty-one years later that
How Can We Better Publish Black Writers in Translation?
This month, WWB took a look back at some of the important writing on race and racism to be found in the magazine s archives. In the wake of 2020 s racist violence, and subsequent organizing by the Black Lives Matter movement and others to combat white supremacy, literary magazines and publishers everywhere have, to differing degrees, made efforts to publish more Black writers. But as some Black writers and editors have pointed out, it is equally as important that we evaluate the assumptions and practices behind these initiatives.
US-based translator Aaron Robertson, Mozambique-based publisher Sandra Tamele, and Haiti-based writer Évelyne Trouillot write on the meaningful changes we need to better publish Black writers from around the world in the twenty-first century.
The Story of One Occasion
On one of many occasions Greta Garbo visited her fellow actress Marilyn Monroe in her home town, the City of Angels. Greta, who lived in New York, flew to the West Coast, took a taxi at the airport, and rode home to Marilyn, who welcomed her in her usual fashion, barefoot in a simple dress. She often wore an apron too because she loved baking rolls for Greta, who kindled her passion for rolls. Greta said she had this effect on people; they wanted to bake and feed her all sorts of delicacies. Marilyn Monroe agreed because she had never had the urge to bake rolls for anyone else. She always loved to open a bottle of wine in the company of good friends so she could be at ease. But Greta wasn t demanding company, she was absentminded and dreamy, always tired after flying, and got absorbed in gazing at little things around her: a statue of a naked boxer with a towel round his neck, a glass ashtray that reminded one of a fishbowl, a book on the coffee table.
Ballad of Aunt Else’s Refugees
It s cold in Schlossberg. The stoves are full
of our nails and hairs. The lift with coal and matches
remained stuck in the middle of the hairdresser s by the City Gate.
We had our forelocks trimmed for free there
and now we look at each other as if in a mirror, pH neutral.
When Aunt Else adds knitting to our slippers
we play darts: she aiming her blue knitting needle
at our hearts, we our red at hers.
Gruss gott.
and accelerates the asylum procedure.
And love. It s going to be all right, Aunt Else says.
Celebrating Kazi Nazrul Islam, Rebel Poet of Bengal
Kazi Nazrul Islam. Unknown author, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
In November of 1922, the young poet Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976) was arrested in Calcutta, India, accused of sedition by the British government. He had recently published the poem “Anandomoyee Agomone” (“The Coming of Anandamoyee”), invoking the Hindu goddess Durga, who is beloved and celebrated with particular verve across Bengal. In the poem, however, Nazrul summons the warrior goddess to fight against imperial rule, denouncing the “butchery” of colonization, describing the ways in which Indians were “whipped” and “hanged,” and calling on Bengali youth to sacrifice their lives to overthrow the British.