Dear friends,
I hope you and your loved ones are all safe and well.
The past week has seen an upheaval of life as we know it, in a way I had never imagined would be a reality in my lifetime (call me unimaginative, but there we go). As you might expect, this is going to mean a shift in the way I’m able to provide content on the Translating Women blog. Most of the work I do here is on my own time, and my new role as a home-schooler, though precious and grounding, will have an impact on what I can realistically hope to achieve elsewhere.
However, I believe that now more than ever it is important to stay connected, to keep looking outwards not only towards you, who read my words and keep me going on this blog, but also towards other cultures and especially their women’s voices. In Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Made for Men, Caroline Criado-Perez discusses evidence showing that in many cultures pandemics disproportionately affect women (see the chapter “It’s Not The Disaster that Kills You”), and so it is vital not only to ensure that women are represented and heard, but also to look beyond our own experience. I believe that a number of issues I find troubling in the Anglophone world have arisen from looking inwards: Trump’s rise to power based on his pledge to build a “big, beautiful wall” on the border between the US and Mexico, Brexit being voted through on the swell of anti-immigration feeling in the UK… in the immediate aftermath of those election and referendum results, I remember acquaintances telling me that it wouldn’t be that bad, and that nothing is forever. That may be true, but everything has consequences, and the rise of nationalism indicates an increasing disconnection with the other that has been manifest in multiple ways as the global crisis escalates. I’ve been thinking these last days about how this resonates with many of the observations and warnings in Europa28, fresh in my mind from a recent review (written in a time when I took so many simple things in my life for granted): Renata Salecl writes that “While people choose to not put the good of the community before themselves, they expect others to do so. We, therefore, have a situation in which people do not think of themselves as part of the community, yet nonetheless imagine that such a community exists.”
I want to remain part of a community. I plan to keep posting content for the foreseeable future, though less frequently and possibly in different formats. It’s likely that my reviews will be shorter, and I’m hoping to include videos as well as text. I’ve also updated my virtual bookshelf to offer brief synopses of over 100 books, and you can always browse the reviews archive, or catch up on interviews and opinion posts from the last two years. Maintaining a virtual community has never felt more urgent: we are living through a crisis dominated by the rhetorics of division, whether it’s Trump renaming coronavirus the “Chinese virus”, racial abuse towards people of Asian origin, generational confrontation (is anyone else sick of the “Boomers vs Millenials” clickbait?) or outbursts of abuse towards retail staff trying to implement fair policies regarding purchasing quantities. Now more than ever we need to remember our common humanity, and literature – with its power to cross borders and open eyes and hearts – has a role to play in that. As Julya Rabinowich wrote, also in Europa28 (and translated by Katy Derbyshire), “The ability for empathy is what might help humankind survive … The safety and security to which we are so accustomed – they are not guaranteed.” As our lives shift and we lose so much of our certainty and security, let us hold on to our empathy. For as long as I can, and when I can, I will keep sharing recommendations, in the hope that my subscribers and visitors will want to keep receiving them.
Until soon, stay safe, and thank you as always for reading,
Helen
