August is a lot of things: it’s uncomfortably hot, it’s National Panini Month and it’s somehow already time for your kids to go back to school.
But August is also Women in Translation Month, a yearly celebration of books by women written in languages other than English. And any celebration that involves the reading of books is one I engage with – possibly while enjoying a cool drink and a warm panino after the kids head off to school.
To talk more about it, I reached out to Jennifer Croft, the award-winning author and translator of writers such as Nobel Prize-winning Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk, with whom she shared the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. Croft has translated works from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish.
Croft is also the author of the memoir “Homesick” and the novel “The Extinction of Irena Rey,” which was published earlier this year, and she spoke by phone from her home in Oklahoma where she is the Presidential Professor of English & Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa. (Croft, by the way, first enrolled as a student at the university when she was 15.)
Croft said Women in Translation Month has been a good thing.
“For me, it has been very helpful as a translator. Initially, when I was starting out, my project was specifically to advocate for and translate contemporary women,” says Croft, who focuses on works by Russian, Polish and Argentine writers including Federico Falco’s “A Perfect Cemetery,” Romina Paula’s “August” and Tokarczuk’s 912-page “The Books of Jacob.”
When society has blinders on about the work of women, Croft says, that affects which books we read and which get chosen for awards.
“I definitely do still think there’s a value in spotlighting women’s work, because, of course, there are still these sexist tendencies in our society,” says Croft.
Not only are translators often overlooked — something that Croft has advocated to change — but the work can seem a bit mysterious as well. For many, translation sounds like a simple process of switching one set of words for another, but it’s obviously far more complex and can be performed in a variety of ways.
“It’s not the same for everybody, and that was one of the reasons why I also wanted to mention some women translators as well as women writers who are being translated, not necessarily by women,” says Croft, who says these days she works with writers of all genders.
“I really think of the translator as the co-author of the translated book. People don’t realize how much power is in every single choice that we make as we’re translating. And translating is always rewriting, and every translator has a different opinion about to what extent that is true for them, but I just don’t see a way that we as human beings can avoid including our own subjectivities in our translation so it becomes a collaboration,” she says. “And I think that’s a good reason to look at the work of women translators.”
It’s fascinating to hear Croft talk about translation, and I’ll be sharing more of our discussion in the near future following the announcement of the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature longlist. (Croft is one of the judges in a group that includes chair Jhumpa Lahiri, and, no, she wouldn’t tell me anything about who’s on the list.)
“Vernon Subutex 1,” by Virginie Despentes and translated by Frank Wynne, is a perfect marriage of translator and author and one of the most brilliant books I’ve ever read. (Handout/FSG Originals/TNS)
But to celebrate the work of women writers and translators, Croft was kind enough to compile a list of book suggestions for readers interested to know more. I’ve already started seeking them out. Read on for her suggestions:
“Strange Beasts of China” by Yan Ge, translated by Jeremy Tiang is a wonderfully fun and endlessly intriguing compendium of urban human-beast encounters that troubles the line between the imaginary and the possible.
“Your Utopia” by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur, is such a fun collection of short stories infused with speculative tendencies, Slavic literary traditions, and extremely relatable pandemic-era fears.
“Emily Forever” by Maria Navarro Skaranger, translated by Martin Aitken, is a beautiful and particular coming-of-age novel about a pregnant young woman who lives in a world of her own.
Then there’s my eternal favorite, “Vernon Subutex 1,” by Virginie Despentes and translated by Frank Wynne, a perfect marriage of translator and author and one of the most brilliant books I’ve ever read.
I would also recommend seeking out the work of women translators like Emma Ramadan (French), Saskia Vogel (Swedish), Mui Poopoksakul (Thai), Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Polish), Tiffany Tsao (Indonesian), Tess Lewis (French and German), Susan Bernofsky (German), Esther Allen (Spanish)—each of these translators also has amazing taste, so anything they choose to work on is probably an excellent choice.
And, too, I’d suggest people check out trans writers like International Booker Prize winner Lucas Rijneveld and stories featuring nonbinary characters such as Pajtim Statovci’s excellent and complex novel “Crossing.”
Laura Marris discusses her essay collection, a book she loves and waffles
Author and translator Laura Marris has just published her debut essay collection, “The Age of Loneliness.” Marris teaches creative writing at University of Buffalo.
Q. Would you tell readers about “The Age of Loneliness,” please?
“The Age of Loneliness” is a book of linked essays blending personal and ecological history. I wanted to break through the separation of person and place and write about landscapes in a way that would cultivate layers of closeness, intimacy, locality. The book begins with more alienated sites (like a fake city built to test self-driving cars) and ends with the woods of my earliest childhood, where I first began to understand the depth and complexity of the more-than-human world.
Q. What led you to the essay form? Are there particular essays or essayists that you return to?
I first fell in love with the essay form because it has a way of merging argument with more poetic work. Because part of my background is in poetry, I often think about the paragraph or section breaks like I might think of the stanza breaks in a poem. Beautiful, imaginative leaps can happen in the space between sections of a braided essay—what the writer and translator Rosmarie Waldrop calls “gap gardening.” But I’m also drawn to essays because they allow more room for all the wild stories that surface when you begin to examine the eco/historical context of a place. Toni Morrison’s essay “The Site of Memory” is a classic that I return to over and over. I’ve also loved recent pieces by Carina del Valle Schorske and Erica Berry.
Q. You are also a translator. Can you talk a little about that work (especially as it’s Women In Translation Month)?
There’s no question that translation has shaped both my way of writing and my relationship to language. When you translate another writer, you step inside their memory, their politics, their vision of the world, and the translation you make is built out of your immersion in that space of mutual creativity and collaboration. Translation helped me see my language as a whole ecosystem of voices that I’ve internalized, and in a way, writing is like wayfinding within that ecosystem.
Q. In “The Age of Loneliness” you include lists of birds. Can you talk about those?
I first learned about birds from my father. He was a birdwatcher who participated in community science projects like the Christmas Bird Count. After he died when I was 19, I found a few of his bird lists in the back of a folder, and they surprised me, because some of the species he was seeing had become harder to find, just over the course of my lifetime. And it made me realize the importance of community science projects, where people go out and count birds, or bats, or horseshoe crabs, or plants. These volunteers check on the health of their local ecosystems in vital ways, and many find lifelong human friendships, too. With the bird lists, I wanted to honor their work, as well as my father’s.
Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
I always recommend Anne Boyer’s “The Undying”—a masterclass in fiercely braided prose.
Q. What are you reading now?
Right now I’m reading shorter things, because my book is launching, and I’m about to go on tour. I’ve been so impressed by Taylor Johnson’s poems in “Inheritance,” a book that listens so deeply to human and more-than-human voices. And Claire Keegan’s novella “Foster” is so good I read it twice.
Q. What’s a memorable book experience – good or bad – you’re willing to share?
When I was in college, I had a summer internship at New Directions Publishing, and as interns, we were allowed to take books home when we left the office. I’m pretty sure I maxed out that policy! But they were generous enough not to mind. That summer, I read W.G. Sebald for the first time, and I discovered Susan Howe’s essays in “The Quarry.” Safe to say, I was never the same.
Q. Do you have a favorite bookstore or bookstore experience?
Here in Buffalo, I love to visit Fitz Books & Waffles. You can get a coffee, a waffle, browse the huge selection of new and used books, or just read on their back deck. Plus, they are a great third space for local events.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
I had to be so patient with some of these essays, to let them find their ultimate forms. And I was quite impatient with that emergence! But I have learned to be gentler with the intuitive part of writing—you can’t rush it.
Q. If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?
I hope that readers will find resonances with the landscapes of their own lives, and that the book will allow them to spend time with all the stories of people, animals, and other living beings that are entangled with their places. I would love to hear some of those stories.
For more about the author, go to lauramarris.com
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