Words Without Borders:

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The Queer Issue XI

Image: Nilbar Güreş, Rose of Sapatão, 2014. Produced for the 31st São Paulo Biennal with the support of SAHA. Photo by CHROMA Istanbul. Courtesy of Galerist Istanbul.

Nonfiction by Susan Harris

The Right to Identity: The Queer Issue

The characters in the works presented here demand recognition of the full spectrum of Queer experience in often hostile environments.

Fiction by Nazlı Karabıyıkoğlu

Elfiye

They looked at me like I was sick.

Translated from Turkish by Ralph Hubbell

Fiction by R. Joseph Dazo

The Man with a Thousand Names

Aren’t you the one with the tattoos?

Translated from Cebuano by John Bengan

bilingual

Nonfiction by Chico Felitti

Ricardo and Vânia

She can't count how many times she had silicone applied to her body.

Translated from Portuguese by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux

Fiction by Juan Carlos Cortázar

Eight Meters

The señora is not going to back down.

Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue

feature

International Queer Poetry

Poetry by Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto

[When I was born my mother]

I practiced the art of clairvoyance, / became a sorceress, a witch, a woman

Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti

bilingual

Poetry by Ricardo Domeneck

Letter to the Father

I ask myself / if mother's ban / against confessing / . . . is still in place

Translated from Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan

Poetry by Mutsuo Takahashi

In Praise of the Nude Body

They’re as naked as the day they were born

Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles

Poetry by Mutsuo Takahashi

Gifts

The wisdom gathered from those wanderings is far deeper / Than that of ancient Greece

Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles

Poetry by Mariana Spada

Post-Op

somewhere in between the promise and the certainty of rain / the bounds of things / —all things, including you— / are blurred

Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers

Graphic Novel

Nonfiction by Lun Zhang and Adrien Gombeaud and Améziane

Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes

Not a day goes by that I don't go back to Tiananmen Square.

Translated from French by Edward Gauvin

Voices from the Pandemic

Nonfiction by The Editors of Words Without Borders

Voices from the Pandemic: A New Series for These COVID-19 Times

Words Without Borders launches a new series of literary responses to the COVID-19 crisis from around the world.

Nonfiction by Laia Jufresa

Really Real Dragons

When I go out with my daughter, I herd her along, trying to keep her two meters away from anyone who approaches.

Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey

Poetry by Yu Jian

On Masks

take custody of my mouth

Translated from Chinese by Shuyu Guo

Poetry by Carolina Pihelgas

notes from this city

the window frames have become national borders, the doorknob a border guard.

Translated from Estonian by Adam Cullen

WWB Daily

July 15th, 2020

Behind the Art: “Rose of Sapatão”

by Nilbar Güreş

Nilbar Güreş's "Rose of Sapatão" is the cover art for the June 2020 issue: The Queer Issue XI. During the last months, I’ve been painting at my home…read more

July 13th, 2020

The City and the Writer: In New York City with Willa Carroll

by Nathalie Handal

If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo…read more

July 9th, 2020

First Read: From “Breathing Through the Wound”

by Víctor del Árbol

In Víctor del Árbol's novel Breathing Through the Wound, translated by Lisa Dillman and out this week with Other Press, an artist accepts an unusual…read more

July 6th, 2020

Confronting the Institution of Language: Juan Arabia on Poetry and the Pandemic

by María Agustina Pardini

In the essay “The Poem as a Field of Action,” presented as a lecture at the University of Washington in 1948, William Carlos Williams argues that after the Industrial Revolution, a…read more

July 1st, 2020

10 Translated Books from India to Read Now

by Arunava Sinha

Almost every time a literary publication in the Western Hemisphere commissions a list of the best novels from India, they turn out to be a compilation of books written in the English language.…read more

June 25th, 2020

The Watchlist: June 2020

by Tobias Carroll

Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about. From Milkweed Editions | The Blue Sky by…read more

Book Reviews

Machado de Assis Gains Different Voices in New Translations of “Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas”

Reviewed by Charles A. Perrone

A deceased character writes his memoirs from beyond the grave in this sui generis classic by the Brazilian master, now published in two new editions that take divergent paths to convey its peculiar combination of "the pen of mirth" and "the ink of melancholy."

Adania Shibli’s “Minor Detail” Caps Its Author’s Long Quest for a Language of Life Under Occupation

Reviewed by Mona Kareem

With every line of this laborious novel, the Palestinian writer explores how war and conflict occur on the level of narrative, history, and the individual psyche. The result is an accumulation of details that store the trauma of those whose screams hang in the air of the past.

Ha Seong-nan’s “Bluebeard’s First Wife” Gives the Old Tale of Patriarchy a New Twist

Reviewed by Hannah Weber

A crucial voice in the burgeoning movement of feminist fiction from South Korea, Ha is a master of atmospheric suspense whose stories use shock and horror to dissect contemporary gender-based violence and its historical roots.

In Mieko Kawakami’s “Breasts and Eggs,” Oppression and Dissent Begin at Women’s Bodies

Reviewed by Saba Ahmed

This meandering narrative, distinguished with the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, keeps a steady focus on how social pressures and the passage of time come to bear on its characters’ corporeality.