Transnational Literature

The Real Presence

2020-05-05T11:48:20+00:00

The opening scenes from Singer’s forthcoming novel, set during the Biafran war.

Vivan's Woes

2020-08-09T01:30:56+00:00

A reluctant teenager faces lockdown with his family.

Tree of Truth

2020-04-29T02:54:47+00:00

During a long-distance relationship, and while listening down a phone line in a search for personal intimacy, the 'everywoman' of this story finds an even finer insight into love.

The Visit

2020-08-26T05:40:06+00:00

A transnational short story about those that seek to help a migrant worker in Singapore.

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2020-11-12T21:26:33+00:00

What We Learn in Times of Pestilence

2020-08-24T02:05:31+00:00

The narrator reflects on reading Camus in Lockdown.

Qatar: Sunshine, Sand and Souqs

2020-08-17T01:42:55+00:00

The narrator swaps Colorado for Qatar.

Chanez

2020-07-23T08:03:10+00:00

Chanez traces her life through the many countries and languages she has lived in, and latterly, her journey to becoming a parent.

My Hikikomori

2020-06-16T05:12:03+00:00

The narrator is asked to help the reclusive son of a friend.

Here and There

2020-08-24T08:16:59+00:00

Here and there is a life writing piece written by a Malaysian living in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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2020-11-13T17:07:27+00:00

Earwitnesses

2020-07-31T02:48:08+00:00

Having an accent in spoken English is a common linguistic reality for many migrants and their subsequent generations. In reality, having a linguistic variation can result in "othering", prejudice, discrimination, and racism. I wanted to explore and respond to what it means to have an accent, for both speakers and listeners. This essay includes moments of the personal with cultural, critical, and contemporary responses; poetic interruptions and instances of first language loss; of how accented language can be used to exclude and identify, but should be used to include.

Insights in Transnational Translation

2020-07-15T01:47:11+00:00

Robyn Rowland’s poems about Turkey and its history are unique in their representations of a poet’s dual perspective both from outside and from within. Her poetic depictions of the land she travels intensively are not only vivid presentations of landscape but also the personal reflections of its history and culture. Although her poetry on Turkey functions as a passage to Turkey for the readers in English, it also appeals to Turkish readers who wish to read about Turkey from the Western point of view, particularly in her poems on the Gallipoli War, which sets a common historical background for both Turks and Australians. This study is an analysis of the translation process of Robyn Rowland’s poems from English into Turkish to indicate the delicacy and particularity of translation linguistically and culturally. Poetry translation is not only transferring the lexical meaning from one language to another, but also transferring the cultural and emotional meanings in the poetics of the target language. The objective of this study is to present analytically the translation of Robyn Rowland’s poems into Turkish from the syntactic, semantic and cultural perspectives.

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2020-11-26T18:10:39+00:00

Creative-critical Section

Aftershocks by Anthony Macris (UWA Publishing, Perth, 2019) Reviewed by Heather Taylor Johnson

2020-09-20T14:02:23+00:00

Poppies in the Post and Other Poems by Debashish Lahiri (Authors Press, Kolkata, 2020) Reviewed by Amelia Walker

2020-09-16T15:06:58+00:00

The Tainted by Cauvery Madhavan (Hoperoad Publishing, London, 2020) and Elsewhere, Home by Leila Aboulela (Telegram, London, 2018) Reviewed by Maggie Gee

2020-09-16T14:52:22+00:00

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad (Jonathan Cape, 2019) Reviewed by Kristien Potgieter

2020-09-14T16:58:29+00:00

Mosaics from the Map (Doire Press, Connemara, 2018) and Under this Saffron Sun – Safran Güneşin Altında (Knocknarone Press, Connemara, 2019) by Robyn Rowland, Turkish translations by Mehmet Ali Çelikel Reviewed by Catherine Akca

2020-08-28T00:13:41+00:00

'V.S. Naipaul's Journeys: From Periphery to Center' by Sanjay Krishnan (Columbia University Press, 2020) Reviewed by Dr Gillian Dooley

2020-05-07T23:04:36+00:00

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, who was born in Trinidad in 1932, died in England in August 2018. In the period since Naipaul’s death many obituaries have appeared, but despite his Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 little recent academic scholarship on his work has been published, and few international meetings have been devoted to his work. He is at present more noteworthy for being controversial than for being one of the great writers of the twentieth century. One cannot yet write about Naipaul without first confronting this fact in one way or another.

One of the few substantial pieces of scholarship to appear since Naipaul’s death is Sanjay Krishnan’s book V.S. Naipaul’s Journeys. Krishnan argues persuasively that the way Naipaul used his own life story and experiences, including his interactions with the people he met on his travels, enabled him to create ‘an original form of postcolonial writing’.

Sita’s Sisters by Sanjukta Dasgupta (Hawakal, Kolkata, 2019) Reviewed by Jaydeep Sarangi

2020-04-24T09:35:36+00:00

To Gather Your Leaving: Asian Diaspora Poetry from America, Australia, UK & Europe, Edited by Boey Kim Cheng, Arin Alycia Fong, Justin Chia (Ethos Books, Singapore 2019) Reviewed by Nicholas Jose

2020-10-14T05:39:29+00:00

In Search of The Woman Who Sailed the World by Danielle Clode (Picador, 2020) Reviewed by Gay Lynch

2020-10-15T23:05:03+00:00

Rabindranath Tagore by Bashabi Fraser (Reaktion Books, London 2019) Reviewed by Suparna Banerjee

2020-11-26T14:07:42+00:00

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2020-11-24T21:48:36+00:00

Editor's Letter

2020-11-26T15:28:31+00:00

The journal editors introduce Issue 12.

A Moving Target Is Harder To Hit: Border-Crossing as a Resistance Weapon in Jackie Kay's “The Smugled Person's Tale”

2020-05-10T11:04:46+00:00

The sovereign State system relies on the idea that all the territory of the world is divided into separate spaces, which are controlled by distinct sovereign governments that make and enforce laws in those territories (Agnew and Corbridge 1995; Jones 2012). Along these lines, Reece Jones claims that those individuals who defy the national demarcations through cross-border movement can be approached as resistant subjects who “disrupt the clean, territorially-based identity categories of the State by evading State surveillance systems and creating alternative networks of connection outside State territoriality” (Jones 2012: 689). In this article, I will analyze the short story “The Smuggled Person’s Tale” (2017), written by Jackie Kay and included in the short story collection Refugee Tales (2017). I argue that this narrative portrays a literary voice of a refugee who, in the need for leaving Afghanistan because of political and social conflicts, defies the sovereign State system by avoiding territorial entrapment through a constant border-crossing. His journey across nations allows him to break the national borders’ dichotomies (in-out / native-immigrant / citizen-exile) (Bhabha 1994; Rojas 2006; Jones 2012; Konrad 2015), thus achieving a nomadic consciousness and reclaiming his right to redefine himself as a global citizen.

Indigenous Transnational: Pluses and Perils, and Tara June Winch

2020-05-22T03:11:59+00:00

Tara June Winch is an unusual example of an Aboriginal writer with a long background of international travel and residence. This paper considers the various negotiations of writer and reception systems among transnational circuits, national spaces, and Indigenous ties to region and "country". It reviews Winch’s three book publications, Swallow the Air, After the Carnage, and The Yield in the context of "the transnational turn" in Australian literary studies, working from a postcolonial background.

History as the Culprit of the Fractured Past and Present in Gulzar's "Two"

2020-06-02T06:48:06+00:00

Seventy years after the subcontinent went under the blade of History to suffer the Partition, a sensitive poet like Gulzar feels compelled to write a novel on the same subject. Partition Literature has a long tradition in various genres and Gulzar himself has authored a number of poetic and non-fiction writings on the Partition. Yet, the subject remains beyond artistic representation and once again the pain and suffering of millions as a repercussion of the event force the literary artists to arrest and assess the problematic with new perspectives. In "Two", Gulzar takes up the historical event as a subject of his fictional art and depicts History as a protagonist still actively working on it without becoming history. The present paper attempts an analysis of the novel "Two" as a Partition novel and the author’s treatment of History in relation to the individuals victimised in its course.

An Unrecorded Grammar: Speaking Embodiment in J. M. Coetzee’s "In the Heart of the Country"

2020-11-06T19:12:03+00:00

This essay seeks to understand how J. M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country elaborates a response to the suffering body by way of linguistic indeterminacy, including its structural presentation via numbered and often contradictory passages and the liminality of Magda’s consciousness.

Grounding the paper on the possibility that Heart functions through its lacunae, I argue that Magda rewrites the oppressive language she has inherited by pointing to realities it cannot grasp, including the irreducible witness of the body in pain. The body stands as an incontrovertible presence just outside the reach of language, where, in its refusal to be codified, it catalyses new, transgressive attempts at speaking.

Such attempts function as a body-speech that could transform the speaking-about of Magda’s monologue into the speaking-to of reciprocity. It is a language that Magda ultimately fails to articulate. She remains suspended in potentiality, reading the signals “in conformations of face and hands” that communicate, incompletely, the mysteries of another’s being.

But perhaps the act of speaking to another must always remain poised on the brink of failure: response to the unknown of another’s being requires an unrecorded grammar. Thus, in the lacunae of his unfixed text, Coetzee offers a linguistic event as a response to actual suffering.

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2020-11-24T21:21:29+00:00

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The Chinese Poet as Translator: An Introduction

2020-10-22T15:17:47+00:00

South of Words

2020-10-22T15:21:42+00:00

Jay

2020-10-22T15:24:55+00:00

Slowing

2020-10-22T15:27:51+00:00

Worried About Home

2020-10-22T15:30:21+00:00

Featured Poet: Alvin Pang

2020-10-04T00:18:19+00:00

We are delighted to present the work of Alvin Pang, acclaimed Singaporean poet, writer and editor with an impressive international reputation.

The Lady of Shalott in 2020

2020-08-30T00:52:19+00:00

When Your Best Friend Tells You She Is Having An Affair

2020-08-24T02:08:41+00:00

Ripples

2020-09-08T23:50:25+00:00

National Anthem

2020-09-07T23:02:06+00:00

Low-hanging Fruit

2020-08-28T08:49:41+00:00

In this piece of non-fiction, the narrator remembers a mother and son, of how he understood them: two people, who were once employed as "servants" in his home.

There is an attempt to understand motives, of why, and despite one's awareness of caste, there was a feeling of rank and privilege.

So, how should this mother and son have occured to him, and then in his life?

And when can you challenge your role, the extent of your influence?

'Low-hanging Fruit' is offered as a memoir, as a record of these questions.

Arm's Length

2020-10-02T04:12:27+00:00

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2020-11-06T21:23:04+00:00