My WiTS End

Menu 08.25 Women in Translation

Dear readers,

You know how book influencers sometimes post about how overwhelmed they are by their TBR? Book publicists keep sending them so many free books and their bookmail is out of control. The built-in shelves organized by color serving as the backdrop are just too full to accommodate these new tomes! Let’s empathize with them, envy them at the same time, and watch their reels all the way through…

My tsundoku is way past reasonable, too. But I have no one to blame but myself for this sorry state of affairs. Let this sad evidence de-influence you from aspiring to my example:

Deinfluencing your book buying habits. In 2019 I found this shelf stashed in a closet when we moved in and decided to use it here “temporarily” even though it’s too tall for this window sill. Each shelf has a double row of books. The rest currently have no home.

If anyone asks me how I have achieved my success in life, my most honest answer would have to be a list called “WE DON’T LIVE THIS WAY ANYMORE.” I can’t change most of what I would like to in this world, but this silly list lights my fucking fire for the things I can. This is where I name ways I’m living beneath my standards—in my mean friend voice. Last weekend I wrote: “Congrats, your room once again has too many books and nowhere to read them. Your mattress is underqualified for its job as a library.”

Shelves better suited to my space may end up being part of my solution, but first I need to fix my system for intake and outflow. In July alone, I bought 16 paper books and two more were given to me (one about Japanese pickling techniques and the other about the architecture of London— my family appreciates my many interests). While many people read books this quickly, I usually read only five or six per month, never more than nine— and usually at least a couple are books I already own, borrowed from the library, or in audio/digital format. The math is not mathing.

Books that entered my collection in July.

Creating this month’s list entirely from books I already own reminded me why I acquire them faster than I can read them. Browsing my shelves to discover that a title my past self chose is exactly what my current self wants to read gives me such a unique pleasure. It’s worth a little chaos.

August is Women in Translation month. WiTMonth, created by Meytal Radzinski in 2014, invites readers to celebrate writing by women in languages other than English.¹ Sorting through my stash to see if I had anything suitable, I found five unread translated titles by women— plus one on my Kindle. Who knew past me was so thoughtful?!

Here are this month’s hopefuls, in reverse chronological order of their publication in English, including books by two Nobel Prize winners:

We are Green and Trembling (2025)

by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, trans. Robin Myers

This novel, by the cofounder of Argentina’s Ni una menos movement, is based on the life of Antonio De Erauso, a real figure from the era of the Spanish conquest who fled a Basque convent and a dead-end life as a nun to become a soldier cabin boy and conquistador. Pursued by the army he deserted and responsible for two Guaraní girls he rescued from enslavement, Antonio contemplates one more metamorphosis to save the new world from extinction.

Motherhood and Its Ghosts (2025)

by Iman Mersal (trans. Robin Moger)

Egyptian writer, translator, and literary scholar Iman Mersal has only one photograph of her mother, who died in childbirth at age 27. The woman in this photograph looks nothing like the woman she remembers. Now a mother herself, she wonders how it’s possible to represent an individual woman whose complex inner landscape is overshadowed by the most looming of archetypes. This book is part of Transit Books’s series of book-length narrative non-fiction essays, Undelivered Lectures. The covers, designed by Anna Morrison, are lovely.

Your Utopia (2024)

by Bora Chung (trans. Anton Hur)

This is a set of stories translated from Korean, set in near and distant futures to explore the possible fates of humanity with a blend of horror, absurdity and dark humor. This appeared on a few best of 2024 lists, including Time and Kirkus. I don’t know much about this author or her other work (Cursed Bunny seems to be her more well-known collection) but this book insisted on following me home one day last year and now I’m going to finally read it.

Greek Lessons (2024)

by Han Hang (trans. Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won)

A woman who cannot speak takes Greek classes from a man losing his sight. Greek Lessons, by Nobel Prize for Literature winner Han Kang, tells the story of their unlikely bond, as they share their private anguish and personal losses. This book also appeared on a lot of 2024 best-of-the-year lists and I’d like to read it before catching up with her latest, We Do Not Part. I love to read a short book in one sitting. Greek Lessons by Han Kang clocks in at 174 pages and has the potential to fill a satisfying few hours.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2020)

Olga Tokarczuk (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones)

I DNF’d The Books of Jacob, my first attempt at reading Tokarczuk. It wasn’t that I hated it exactly, but early 2022 was not a time when I was in the mindset to take on 1,000 pages that felt like a second job to read. Since then, I’ve felt intimidated to try another of the Nobel Laureate’s works. Friends EJ Johnson, Courtney Sender and feminism for all encouraged me, recommending this book in response to my Note crowdsourcing books with protagonists over the age of 50.

Drive Your Plow is a thriller/fairy tale taking place on the border between Poland and the Czech Republic. Janina is an older woman protagonist whose interests in astrology, wildlife, and translating William Blake’s poetry converge with a series of murders targeting members of a local hunting club. I’m 85 pages in and loving it so far.

The Door (2015)

by Magda Szabo (trans. Len Rix, intro by Ali Smith)

A Hungarian writer with an on-again-off-again relationship to Communist authorities builds a strange bond with her housekeeper, Emerence, over 20 years. Illiterate, stubborn, abrupt, and exceedingly private, Emerence gradually takes control of the household and becomes indispensable to Magda. At the same time, she comes to depend on the writer as well. I’m intrigued by what seems to be a stylish novel rooted in domestic events and the experiences of a singular woman.

I’m still reading Mansfield Park as well and trying to catch up with Plain Jane of The Austen Connection’s read-along schedule.

• Would it be crazy to maintain a home library that tips the balance in the direction of books to-be-read over books already read?

• What’s the longest a book has sat on your shelf before becoming the right thing at the right time?

• Comment with a woman in translation whose work has been underrated, or who you’re excited to read for any reason this month.

Cheers,

1. Somewhere between 70-75% of new releases translated to English from other languages in a given year were written by men, so this annual push to promote individual women writers aims to draw attention to this disparity and show the publishers that there’s interest in more of these voices. The resources WiT offers include trans and non-binary writers as well, unless they’ve asked not to be.