Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Call For Papers

Posted on August 28, 2009 by Richard Jeffrey Newman

I am organizing a panel on the translation of non-Western literatures for the Northeast Modern Language Association’s annual conference, which will be held in Montreal, April 7-11. Here is the call for papers. Please send proposals to me at richard.newman at ncc dot edu.

Non-Western Literatures in Translation

The act of literary translation raises by definition the question of how the target culture frames the language and culture of the text to be translated. This issue, often unexamined, can determine not only which texts from which languages are chosen for translation, but also what the relationship between the translation and the original text is understood to be. Nineteenth century British and American translators of classical Iranian poetry, for example, often portrayed themselves quite explicitly as improving on what they understood to be the “oriental” defects of the poets they were working with. This stance finds its roots in British colonial rule of India, where Persian was the language of the Moghul courts, and the idea that, if only the British could understand Persian and the psychology it embodied, they could make themselves more effective colonial rulers. The history of the translation into English of other non-Western literatures–including those we now consider Western, like classical Greek–is fraught with similar kinds of bias, as are contemporary assumptions about the value non-Western literatures hold for us. Keeping in mind the fact that less than 3% of all the books published in the United States in any given year are literary translations, and the fact that publishing at all levels is a business that both creates and responds to its market, this panel seeks to examine the issues confronting the translation of non-Western literatures, from classical to contemporary, into English. While we would like the emphasis to be on languages that are not already commonly translated (Japanese and Chinese, among others), we welcome proposals concerning any non-Western language. We encourage a variety of perspectives–from authors of texts that have been translated (or texts in search of a translation), translators, scholars, publishers–and would prefer to have papers addressing a range of time periods. Topics might include the linguistic and cultural challenges of translating non-Western languages, what we learn from the history of the translation of a given work or body of work, translation success stories, the challenges of publishing literary translations of non-Western languages, or why a given work or body of work deserves more attention–scholarly and otherwise–than it has been given. We also look forward to being surprised by ideas that have not occurred to us.

Posted in literature | 3 Comments

Shakesville's Melissa on Ted Kennedy

Posted on August 28, 2009 by Ampersand

I wanted to point out this excellent remembrance of Ted Kennedy, which is particularly relevant to some of the discussion that’s been going on here at “Alas” recently. Melissa writes:

Senator Edward Kennedy was a tough guy. He was smart, tenacious, opinionated, strong in body, mind, and spirit. And I think because he was such a tough guy, he won’t mind if I don’t share my real and uncensored thoughts on the occasion of his passing.

Teddy, as he was known, was privileged, in every sense of the word. And he made liberal use of his privilege, in ways I admired and ways I did not. The terrible bargain we all seem to have made with Teddy is that we overlooked the occasions when he invoked his privilege as a powerful and well-connected man from a prominent family, because of the career he made using that same privilege to try to make the world a better place for the people dealt a different lot.

Twice, Teddy did despicable things with his privilege, very publicly.

Read the rest.

Posted in In the news | 6 Comments

New podcast, read by me: Hall Of Mirrors

Posted on August 28, 2009 by Ampersand

I read aloud a short story for Podcastle: “Hall of Mirrors” by Bruce Holland Rogers. It’s a funny piece, and only about 14 minutes long.

This is the third story I’ve read for Podcastle. Previously, I’ve read “On The Banks of the River of Heaven,” by Richard Parks, and “Gordon, the Self-Made Cat,” by Peter Beagle.

Podcastle is edited by Rachel Swirsky, who in her secret identity as Mandolin is a blogger and moderator here at “Alas.”

Posted in Whatever | Comments Off on New podcast, read by me: Hall Of Mirrors

Baliksambayanan: Day 1, "You are surrounded by Victims."

Posted on August 28, 2009 by Jack Stephens

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

Latter on when I got back to the BAYAN office, after the noise barrage (and after having lunch with the Secretary-General of Bayan, Nato Reyes, in where I had a soft drink, rice, curry chicken, and a banana for P85; that’s US$1.77 !), there was a lot of activity in the anticipation that a political prisoner would be released that night from jail.

As I stated in the previous post she wasn’t released that night, but was released latter due to pressure on the government inside the prison (form the prisoners) and outside the prison.

As people were preparing to take off toward the jail (we were on the bottom floor, an open area beneath the four story Bayan building and enclosed by a large gate) I saw a young man walk in with the cutest damned baby you ever saw (she was only around six months old and had chubby cheeks). As we were introduced and after acting like a fool around the baby (you know how it is, all talking in a squeaky voice and such) I was told by one of the Bayan officers that the father of the child had actually been captured by the military and was heavily tortured during his one year of capture. They had accused him of being a communist and a member of the New People’s Army (the communist guerrilla insurgency). He was able to escape from the place and later ended up going to the UN and successfully petitioned the Court of Appeals in the Philippines for a Writ of Amparo (which forces the government to give protection to a person seeking the Writ of Amparo).

After talking to the father for a bit the same officer pointed to the security guard (an unarmed man wearing no uniform who mainly watches the gate and lets people in or keeps folks out) and said, “He lost his father under Marcos.”

Then she pointed to someone else and said, “Her daughter disappeared under [the current president] Arroyo even though [her daughter] wasn’t an activist.”

She then turned to me and said, “So you are surrounded by victims, torture victims, and people on hit lists.” She too is on a hit list as well. Obviously, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed.

Posted in International issues, Prisons and Justice and Police | Comments Off on Baliksambayanan: Day 1, "You are surrounded by Victims."

Let Them Have Their Great White Hope

Posted on August 27, 2009 by nojojojo

let-them-have-their-great-white-hope

So there’s a minor tempest in a teapot at the moment because the Republicans’ racism slip is showing again. Shiny new Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins uttered a very Freudian slip at one of her public addresses, suggesting that “Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope.” Brava, Congresswoman! Way to step in it right out of the box. Predictably, the media’s given a collective gasp to show that it is shocked, shocked I tell you, that there is any whiff of open racism in the party’s agenda. Keith Olbermann has called for the congresswoman to face “some sort of sanction”, and the rest of the left is practically salivating for its pound of flesh. And of course, the congresswoman is hastening to fauxpologize and clarify that she didn’t mean to invoke deadly race riots and racist history, no, never, ‘course not.

Y’know what? I’m tired of this.

I want the Republicans to just stop dancing around the issue. Drop all the dogwhistles and “I know you are but what am I” crap; ditch the dramatic irony of using racists to cry racism. I want them to just come out and say that this is what they want:

Image from the Republican National Convention, showing hundreds of enraptured white men, no visible women or PoC

From sea to bright, white, shining sea.

Because if that’s what they want, fine. There’s nowhere near enough white men in this country to win them another election. Once they’ve alienated all the PoC, all the women, all the GLBTQIs, everybody who doesn’t look and act like them, they’ll have relegated themselves to political obscurity. Then they won’t regain power and screw up our economy again, get us into another dumbass war, threaten to turn us into a theocracy, or make the rest of us feel ashamed of being American.

So I hope they find their Great White Hope. I hope they embrace their racism, and their neo-Southern Strategy, until it kills them. Then we can relegate them to the bin of history, and maybe a sane conservative party will take its place — or better still, several sane new parties. And maybe then we can actually start trying to become, y’know, post-racial. (Whatever the hell that is.)

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Let Them Have Their Great White Hope

Posted in Syndicated feeds | 8 Comments

Edward Kennedy, 1932-2009

Posted on August 26, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

In many ways, Ted Kennedy was the most consequential of all the Kennedy brothers. His older brother Jack was president, of course, and his older brother Bobby was Attorney General, and perhaps would have been president had he not been assassinated. And both men have been far more celebrated through the years since their deaths. Jack’s death was lamented as the cutting short of a life that could have been great; Bobby’s is part of the low point of the 1960s, the 1968 spring and summer that cost the lives of both he and Martin Luther King, Jr., a year that ended with the election of a man who was morally unsuited to be president.

Ted Kennedy was in the Senate in 1963 when Jack was shot and killed in Texas. He had been there for a year, having won the seat his brother left in a 1962 special election. He would serve there for 47 years, building a political legacy that, in the end, outshone what his brothers had accomplished.

Kennedy was a driving force behind repeated hikes in minimum wage, creating the S-CHIP program (which provides health insurance for children), the existence of Title IX, and the preservation of the Voting Rights Act during the Reagan administration. Kennedy was instrumental in preventing Robert Bork’s confirmation, an act that literally saved Roe v. Wade. He was a strong anti-Apartheid activist, defying South Africa’s racist government by staying with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on a 1985 trip. He also worked with the Reagan administration as an envoy to the Soviet Union, negotiating for arms reductions with Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. In recent years he led the effort to liberalize immigration laws. And when health insurance reform is passed — and it will be passed — it will because of the hard work Kennedy has put into its creation.

Kennedy also played an outsized role in presidential politics, despite only seeking the office once, in 1980. Kennedy’s challenge to Jimmy Carter arguably fatally wounded Carter’s political career, but it also set in motion the realignment of both Democrats and Republicans in the South. And it’s arguable that the man who holds the office today is there because of a well-timed endorsement from Kennedy during last year’s primary; Barack Obama gained badly needed momentum going into Super Tuesday thanks to the Kennedy blessing. Given the whisker-thin margin he won by, it’s hard to imagine that Obama could have won had Kennedy even merely stayed neutral.

Kennedy was not perfect, of course. He battled alcohol addiction, and was for many years a serial womanizer, known for carousing in Washington with Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. Kennedy’s personal history, and the history of Kennedy womanizing and infidelity, kept Kennedy from coming out strongly against Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearings.

But Kennedy appeared to have beaten those demons in his later life. He was married to his last wife, Vicki, in 1992, and by all accounts, she was a positive, stabilizing force in his life. By the time he fell ill last summer with a brain tumor, the paparazi had long stopped following Kennedy around; he’d become too boring in his old age.

People will view Kennedy’s passing at 77 as a tragedy, but Ted knew what tragedy was. He died an old man, at home with his family. He alone among the Kennedy brothers avoided a violent death (the eldest Kennedy brother, Joe Jr., died in World War II). Kennedy’s death is not a tragedy, just a part of life. It is sad only that he could not have lived another year, to see his hard work on health care come to fruition.

Kennedy was always a passionate defender of progressive ideals, and through almost five decades in public service he was a powerful voice in favor of equality, justice, and economic assistance. Few men or women in American history have had such a consequential political career. It is a grand legacy, and as an American, I’m grateful for it.

Posted in Elections and politics, In the news | 68 Comments

Mindblowing SF Lists

Posted on August 25, 2009 by the angry black woman

mindblowing-sf-lists

The other day I asked folks to name me some mindblowing sf stories, novels and authors in response to this silliness here. As I expected, you came through, as did a bunch of other people over on this post asking for mindblowing sf by women. I collated all of the data and came up with these massive lists of mindblowing SF. Thank you for all of your help :)

There were a couple of reasons why I posted it on Tor.com instead of here or the Feminist SF blog. One, I can always link to them, and that’s important and useful, too. Two, I wanted these lists to exist on a mainstream site that wasn’t particularly about race or gender activism but instead about science fiction and fantasy in general. Because I want people who stumble across or seek out those lists to see that these are not just the concerns of women and POC, but concerns of the entire community. Some folks need a reminder of such.

I’m really grateful to everyone who commented because you introduced me to some authors and fiction I hadn’t heard of or previously considered. I hope it spurs others to read some new stuff as well.

Another reason I’m grateful is that, when arguments about representation happen, often times we’re asked to give long lists of authors and stories the editor/reader/whoever should read or pay attention to or whatever. Just going off the top of my head I can often give them a few, but a big huge list is usually beyond me. I do not know of every author, every piece of fiction. When we’re confronted by people who claim that there just aren’t very many outstanding women or POC writers in the field, we can point to this and say: bullshit, bucko. Try again.

We have to be responsible for keeping track of and highlighting and celebrating and giving notice to our own and recording the accomplishments of our best. Because no one else is going to do it for us. If they’re not ignoring, they’re actively suppressing. Neither of which is acceptable.

Make lists, write reviews, pass on books, stories, and authors you love. Be heard.

(x-posted to Feminist SF: The Blog)

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Mindblowing SF Lists

Posted in Race, racism and related issues, Syndicated feeds | 1 Comment

The Pakistani People Are Our Friends? Really?

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Ampersand

Back in February, Dave Kilcullen said this in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

All this suggests that the most appropriate diplomatic strategy is to identify, within Pakistan, our friends and allies (civilian democratic political leaders, some officials, and much of the Pakistani people)….

Kilcullen is an actual expert who has been to the region, so it’s likely he knows something I don’t. But I find that claim more than a little odd. Contrast what Kilcullen is saying to this news story:

After Ms. McHale, the Obama administration’s new under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, gave her initial polite presentation about building bridges between America and the Muslim world, Mr. Abbasi thanked her politely for meeting with him. Then he told her that he hated her.

“You should know that we hate all Americans,” Ms. McHale said Mr. Abbasi told her. “From the bottom of our souls, we hate you.”

According to a Pew poll, 68% of Pakistanis have an unfavorable view of the United States. In fact, of the countries Pew surveyed, there are only four where the US is more hated. If our strategy in Pakistan depends on much of the Pakistani people being our “friends and allies,” then we’re in deep trouble.

(Don’t get me wrong, I’d like ordinary Pakistanis to be friends with America. But for the most part, they’re not.)

That’s a minor point, but it ties into my growing impression that the folks who favor an continued, and expanded, US war in Afghanistan aren’t being entirely realistic. In that same testimony, Kilcullen wrote:

We need to prevent the re-emergence of an Al Qaeda sanctuary that could lead to another 9/11.

That’s just ludicrous. There’s nothing unique about Afghanistan that means that Al Qaeda can plot attacks from Afghanistan and no where else in the world. (Indeed, a significant portion of 9/11 seems to have been plotted in Germany). Even Stephen Biddle — who strongly advocates for the US to remain at war in Afghanistan — admits that preventing Al Qaeda from having a sanctuary in Afghanistan isn’t a very sensible argument.

Posted in Afghanistan, International issues | 18 Comments

Entertaining Anti-Racism in About an Hour

Posted on August 24, 2009 by nojojojo

entertaining-anti-racism-in-about-an-hour

Personal disclosure: this guy is my first cousin. Which in no way invalidates what I’m saying below.

OK, so like many of you I’ve done my share of “diversity workshops”. Which were mostly, I have to admit, pretty good — generally because they were long enough (several days) to dig deep; hands-on and interactive; integrated into everyday practice thereafter; and run by extremely patient/knowledgeable workshop facilitators. This is one of the benefits of working in education versus the corporate world; most educators don’t expect to tackle a complex and emotional subject in a quick soundbyte.

That said, I have done some diversity workshops that reached fathomless depths of assitude. There was the one run by a very young, white, self-identified heterosexual and Christian, visibly anxious facilitator who gave me a blank look when I asked a question about privilege. (I didn’t bother asking any more questions after that; spent the rest of the session working on a short story.) There was also the one in which, after a fellow black woman shared a painful and powerful anecdote about being on the receiving end of some blatantly racist treatment as a college student, a white female participant shared her feelings about being so, so sorry “on behalf of white people” and then broke down crying, at which point everyone in the workshop started comforting her. (Except me and the other black women, who shared a deep spiritual eyeroll.) And then there was the diversity workshop that lasted only one hour out of a six-day, 48-hour training session. No matter how good that workshop was, the amount of time devoted to it sent a message on behalf of the trainers: reducing harm to non-privileged people means so much to us that we’re going to spend 2% of our time on it. Go us! (Yes, go. Please. Really.)

These kinds of workshops are a waste of everyone’s time — no, worse. They make the privileged participants feel better about themselves (for completing the workshop) without actually challenging their privilege, and they make the rest of us feel very fucking tired.

But I want to spread the word about the best short anti-racism workshop I’ve now seen: comedian W. Kamau Bell’s “Ending Racism in About an Hour”.

It’s not a comedy show. (As my aunt, Kamau’s mom, has very emphatically informed me.) It’s a solo theatrical performance… which just happens to be funny as hell. Kamau is the latest of a wave of black comedians who do more than merely exaggerate stereotypes and “keep it real”, whateverthehell that means; he openly confronts the issues of power and the status quo, and the LogicFails that allow racism to perpetuate itself. (I’ve been avidly following another comedian who does this too: Elon James White of This Week in Blackness.) Here’s an example of Kamau in action:

In his latest show, Kamau does everything I’ve ever seen in a good anti-racist workshop: he explains privilege and the power dynamics of racism; gives examples of aversive racism, objectification, and stereotyping; and doesn’t pull punches about the life-and-death impact racism has on politics, economics, health care, and more. But he does all of it without ever using the terminology, and without losing his audience. (Yeah, including Angry Black Women.) Well, scratch that — when I attended his performance on Saturday, he mentioned that a white guy once walked out on him, complaining of guilt. But one out of thousands ain’t bad.

Anyway, I’ve said all this to note that Kamau is in New York City this week for a limited run, as part of NYC’s International Fringe Festival. Most of the shows are already done — sorry, but I wanted to see it before I blogged about it, and I’ve been crazy busy lately — but he’s got one last NYC performance coming up on August 29th at 5 p.m. The one I attended was standing-room-only, so you might wanna buy tix early. If you can’t catch him in NYC, though, he’s a regular at the Punch Line in his adopted home of San Francisco (where he’s Best Comedian of 2008 according to SF Weekly).

Oh, yeah — and if you bring a friend of a different race, you get a free gift! (So if you’re stuck being somebody’s Special Black Friend, bring them to this show so you can get something out of it for a change.)

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Entertaining Anti-Racism in About an Hour

Posted in Race, racism and related issues, Syndicated feeds | 15 Comments

Hair, Blackness, and Beauty

Posted on August 24, 2009 by karnythia

hair-blackness-and-beauty

I need to wash and twist my hair. I do not feel like twisting it, but it needs washing and if I wash it I have to twist it since it refuses to even think about locing and thus water = losing its shape. So, as I’m sitting here doing everything but my hair, my mind is wandering over how my perception of beauty has changed since I went natural. I admit I used to be one of those black women that thought natural hair looked a mess. Then I started growing up and really paying attention to what well maintained natural styles looked like on friends and neighbors. And over time I start wishing I could wear a twist out or puffs. And then hormones (combined with yet more breakage) made me cut off all the relaxed hair. Those of you reading my LJ back in 2005 probably remember me posting about the Big Chop. What I don’t think I mentioned (though I might have) is that I had no idea how to do my hair. None. Because I always went to a beauty salon as a kid, Jesse’s Place where my hair was pressed bone straight, braided, or relaxed regularly for years. Not once that I can remember was my hair allowed to just be the way it grew out of my head. My grandmother took me to the salon every two weeks like clockwork. She meant well, but she had a whole lot of internalized race issues that meant I didn’t see myself with natural hair until I was 17, it was damaged again and I started trying to rebel against that “Natural is not good enough” aesthetic.

Even before the perm that burned1 at 3 the few pics I’ve seen of me as a toddler make it clear that my family always did something to straighten it. So at 17 when I first tried to go natural I had no idea how to take care of my hair, and I eventually caved under the pressure and got it relaxed again. Post chop (after the initial shock) I started learning how to deal with it. And for a long time I wasn’t entirely sold on natural. Mostly I was convinced that I had consigned myself to looking unfortunate for some months. Then it got long enough for me to want to do things to it. And the more I learned, the more I liked having natural hair. Because all of sudden doing my hair didn’t have to involve any pain. None. And some of you are probably thinking “Why the hell do black women do that if it hurts?” and there’s a whole list of answers to that question from preference, to not being burned by relaxers, to internalized racism. And this isn’t a “You’re not black enough if you straighten your hair” post. Because let’s be real, if blackness were that easily defined we wouldn’t be discussing the diaspora every time someone insisted that “All black people experience X”. No, this post is about a new definition of beauty and moving away from the idea that there is only one aesthetic.

Now that I’m old enough to see the trap in “You’re pretty for a black girl” I can also see the trap in trying to define beauty for all races by the ideals of one race. So, I’m going to continue to ignore beauty ideals that center around women with skin and hair nothing like mine. Funnily enough the more I do that, the more I find myself being amused when I get the “Pretty for a black girl” routine. Hearing those words used to hurt, because of course the message for young black women is a whole lot of “No one wants you unless you change X and Y and Z” interspersed with “You’re all sluts and on welfare” because that’s what happens when you’re sitting at the intersection of Racism and Misogyny2 from birth. And some of us buy into it3 but when you know that the end result of adhering to the mindset is bad plastic surgery and ugly contacts while women of other races are lauded for the same features4 you’re trying to change? You start to get over it. Because if someone can’t appreciate my hair, my lips, my butt, and my color? That’s not my problem. I appreciate them. My spouse appreciates them. And those messages hanging on the corner of Racism and Misogyny? Well, I’ve got gasoline and a match. I’m learning to think that my hair is amazing (even when I don’t want to do it) and that black girls are just plain pretty.

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Hair, Blackness, and Beauty

Footnotes

  1. A super perm containing lye was used and I wound up in the hospital with chemical burns and no hair on the bottom half of my head.
  2. Here’s a handy list of list of popular stereotypes.
  3. See any episode of the Tyra Banks Show where she talks to black women who hate being black
  4. Look up Angelina Jolie, Kim Kardashian, and Jennifer Lopez and compare their pics to Little Kim’s over the years.
Posted in Race, racism and related issues, Syndicated feeds | 2 Comments