Thursday, February 06, 2025

What I bought at Rizzoli (Jan. 2025)

I had to travel light when a few weeks ago I visited Rizzoli, my favorite bookstore in New York City: so just two books. But the one by Donatella Di Pietrantonio? (Borgo Sud) Pinch me! -- I had actually met her that day as part of the Multipli Forti Italian literature conference organized by the Italian Cultural Institute, NYU, Fordham and Rizzoli, among other organizations.

As for Un bene al mondo, by Andrea Bajani, well, I am still limping after immersing myself in his novel, Se consideri le colpe, (stunning English translation by Elizabeth Harris, "If You Kept a Record of Sins," published by Archipelago). It's about a boy whose jet-setting mother largely abandons him to pursue a career -- and a love life away from her husband -- in Romania. I can only hope this new title by Bajani offers slightly less anguish, otherwise I won't recover.

I must admit -- having just reviewed a new Patrick Modiano novel for the Boston Globe -- that I fleetingly eyed the French section. As the Rizzoli shopping bags proudly proclaim, the bookstore carries books in Italian, English AND French!

I'm sure some visit the store because it is stunningly elegant.

Others may visit the store because it is a short block from Eataly, or because it's on a wonderfully tranquil block of Broadway that more or less deadends into Madison Square Park.

And, of course, the shop has dozens of book-adjacent gift items -- the most incredible journals, for example. (And sometimes La Settimana Enigmistica).

But I go for the foreign books, and one day, I am going to give into my urge to buy French books, too!

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Wednesday, January 29, 2025

"My Alma Mater is Auschwitz" in World Literature Today

Thrilled to say my translation of a speech by Edith Bruck entitled, "My Alma Mater is Auschwitz," has been published!

Edith gave this speech in 2018 when she received an honorary doctorate from a university in Rome. It gave her occasion to ponder her own education, which was interrupted when at age 12, she was seized from her loving home and sent to Auschwitz, so unsurprisingly, she approached the topic from an unusual angle that demands our full attention.

The piece begins:

 As the poorest among the poor, with or without anti-Semitism and the race laws, I wouldn’t have been able to attend university. My alma mater is Auschwitz, a place that’s become the symbol of absolute evil among the 1,635 concentration camps that belonged to the ultra-civilized Germany and other countries allied with or occupied by Hitler.

Auschwitz: the university where you learn everything. Above all, to know yourself. There, you learn anthropology, philosophy, history, psychology, faith and religion. The value of life, the value of bread. But it also teaches the sorrow you feel when a blonde child spits on you.

There’s much to learn for the man who in slavery is defenseless and incapable of looking after himself. There’s much to learn for the woman who’s stronger and more resistant to the pain, shrewder and more capable of coming up with tricks to evade selection for the crematorium. The woman who learns to make herself invisible in order to gain another day of life.

You also learn the lingo of swear words. The range of behavior among the different social classes. Shame and pity for the guards, though the cold, the hunger and the terror cloud your reason and don’t permit much feeling.

You learn to understand everything. You understand the dehumanizing of the deported who become Kapos. You understand and pity the companions willing to take on a miserable job in exchange for the chance to steal a piece of turnip from the bottom of the soup pot.

But you also discover light in the darkness. When for example a soldier gives you a warm potato, a tattered glove, when he leaves a bit of jelly in the mess tin he’s tossed you to wash, and when he asks you, “What’s your name?” It sounds like the voice of heaven. You’re no longer prisoner #11152. You exist!

And so, you begin to hope you’ll come out of that hell, and come out a better person because you won’t ever forget three things: that you’ll never be a racist, a fascist; you’ll never discriminate against anyone; and you’ll never be like your persecutors.


You can read the rest at World Literature Today:


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Sunday, January 26, 2025

Remembering the Holocaust at the Italian Consulate (Jan. 27)

On January 27, a crowd will gather outside the Italian Consulate in New York, no matter the temperature. 

It always does for International Holocaust Remembrance Day when the Italian consul, staff from Centro Primo Levi and others take turns reading the names of thousands of Italian Jews who were deported from Italy by the Nazis and killed in concentration camps across Europe. It will be one of many events connected with the day, which will mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. 

But Italy has a special – and damning – connection to the Holocaust. It collaborated with Germany on pushing Jews to the margins of society through the 1938 Racial Laws, among other measures, and then exterminating as many as possible. 

This event is arguably sui generis because while Italy played a critical role in persecuting the Jews, the country had a relatively small Jewish population and so the number of names read is a little less than 10,000 -- a number that allows for reading all of the victims' names in the space of a day. It is a one-of-a-kind commemoration for those who somberly read the names and even for the strangers walking by on their way to work or school, hearing even just for a moment an echo of all that was lost.

And I will be there to pay my respects. What's commemorated on Jan. 27 is on my mind night and day, as I await final publication of This Darkness Will Never End, my translation of Edith Bruck's 1962 short story collection (Italian title: Andremo in città).

For more information:

https://primolevicenter.org/events/giorno-della-memoria-2025/

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Sunday, January 19, 2025

Writing about Patrick Modiano for the Boston Globe (Jan. 19, 2025)

So thrilled to write about Patrick Modiano in the Sunday Boston Globe. His newest novel, Ballerina, which will be published this week by Yale University Press, reminded me of a saying attributed to Henry Moore about the necessity of having a task that consumes you every day -- one that you'll never be able to complete, however. Presumably Moore was thinking about sculpture but what about writing fiction in a bid to exhume the personal and political ghosts of wartime Paris?

Modiano has published dozens of books -- yes, dozens -- and nearly all of them circle a particular time period -- the Occupation and the 30-year-period that followed in France -- and a particular obsession: what Daddy did during the war.

As I mention in the review, Modiano's father was Jewish and on the run from the Nazis. A terrible story and regrettably very common in that period but Alberto Modiano took a different approach: if the Nazis essentially outlawed his Jewish identity, then an outlaw he would be, trading goods on the Black Market, possibly collaborating in odd ways.

In Ballerina, which was translated by Mark Polizzotti, Modiano only touches on such things obliquely but the mystery of his father's existence  -- and also the neglect shown both by Albert and Albert's wife to their two children, including young Patrick -- continues to haunt France's most famous living author.

Read the review at the Globe site here:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/15/arts/in-ballerina-patrick-modiano-again-revisits-wartime-paris/

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Monday, January 06, 2025

My new English translation -- This Darkness Will Never End (out soon!)

Today I sent back corrections on the typeset proofs of my translation, This Darkness Will Never End.

Hundreds of little steps, seemingly, are behind the publishing of a book, in this case a translation of a short story collection by Edith Bruck. Conferring with the editor at Paul Dry Books, my publisher. Conferring with the marketing executive. Contacting bookstores about the possibility of holding a reading. 

All of this after spending a year translating the book!

So, lots of work but what a hum there is in my little heart! What a labor of love it has been. I am grateful for: 

*Translating a book from Italian, which is such a vital part of my life it feels like a twin that follows me everywhere. 

*Translating a 1962 classic that's been overlooked by the Anglophone world, and one that's by a woman author

*And translating a writer whose experiences of the Holocaust have forced me to conclude I don't know enough about this critical period of history -- and I never will. So I will simply study it for the rest of my life. 

As I noted in an article for the American Scholar about the work of women survivors, the experiences of women often offer a different perspective on the Holocaust but it's one that's sometimes been marginalized or forgotten so I still have so much to discover.

Oh and the book has its own page on the publisher's site. Here it is:

https://www.pauldrybooks.com/products/this-darkness-will-never-end

Edith once called Auschwitz "the University of Evil," but she said, "You also discover light in the darkness."

The book will be published in April -- so please, stay tuned.

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Monday, December 30, 2024

All I Want for Christmas is Guglielmo Coffee

Even at my advanced age, I find a lot of gifts under the tree. But the one I want most is a mega shipment of Guglielmo coffee!

The American distributor for the brand is based in Massachusetts, and every year, Il Nostro Inviato (the original 'friend of the blog') orders it to be shipped to our home (now in Connecticut, but before in Atlanta). 

One sip and I might as well be in Southern Italy.

Yes, yes Lavazza is Italian coffee, and I drink it. But brands like Guglielmo and Caffe Kimbo offer a very intense coffee experience! You are left in no doubt that you've had -- and almost certainly savored -- a cup of Joe (or Giuseppe, as the case may be).

The brand also has a very cool motto: Il caffe che fa centro. The coffee that hits the spot!

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Monday, December 16, 2024

The Year in Translating Women (one specific woman) -- 2024

Every year, I tally up what I've accomplished professionally -- mainly my year in writing, but also translation. Basically, what I've managed to publish.

I started blogging about this because I noticed a wildly successful writer (Alexander Chee) did so. (He's a hard act to follow!)

Looking back on this year, I find there's not much published writing to consider! Not much writing, period -- but a lot of translation. 

This was the year I completed my first book-length translation manuscript. (See cover mockup at left).

And like all of the short stories and poetry that I've translated and published, the book is by a woman author. Thanks to Paul Dry Books for continuing to invest in Edith Bruck, an important transnational Italian writer!

I did publish a little writing this year -- including a Tiny Love Story in The New York Times! -- and an essay about the Brat Pack documentary for CNN

But mainly, I plugged away at the monumental task of revising, polishing, proofing and publishing a translated book.  And I'm thrilled it's a translation of a book by a woman.

Translate women.

It's all I've done in the seven years that I've been translating Italian literature.

It’s not surprising that I would come to think of this as my mantra, my purpose. Women's achievements inspire me. They make me feel as though I have vicariously achieved something, so I've enjoyed discovering emerging Italian women writers and also overlooked authors.

(It’s also easier for me to confine my translation projects to women authors: I don’t work full-time as a literary translator.) 

I stumbled into the field after earning an MFA and seeing the literary world as a potential home not only for my original writing but also for translated works of literature. Specifically works written by Italian women writers that I could smuggle into English.

Women and men, of course, share many of the same concerns, emotions and hardships, all of which can fuel the best writing.

But because the circumstances of their lives have often been different – a focus on caregiving for women, fewer work opportunities historically, mortality related to bearing children -- the experiences they've drawn from are often fundamentally different. In the case of the Holocaust narrative I’m now consumed by, women who were deported to Nazi concentration camps had to contend with the same inhumane conditions as the men -- meager rations, freezing temperatures, disease, evil guards -- but also fear of sexual predation, clandestine pregnancies and decisions regarding separation from their children that frequently hinged on the mother or the child headed for certain death.

There are many others focused on promoting translated works by women, including the Women In Translation initiative, which sponsors Women in Translation month every August.

But we still have a long way to go.

The first book I began translating seriously was Passaggio in ombra by Mariateresa Di Lascia. I learned about it while writing an article for Lit Hub about overlooked works by Italian women writers. The book won the highest literary award Italy confers -- the Strega -- but has somehow not been published in English.

(My translation manuscript, "Into the Shadows," isn’t finished but I plan to return to the project in 2025, after shepherding This Darkness Will Never End into print; I won a PEN grant for the manuscript-in-progress and I remain grateful for it!).

That project gave me my mission: paying special attention to works by women overlooked by the literary world.

So now I translate women, I review literature by women writers and I look for any opportunity to spotlight books written by women. And I will continue to champion the work of women!

Here’s some of the work I’ve done so far to advance this mission:

*An article for the journal, American Scholar, on overlooked women writers who survived the Holocaust: 

"The Forgotten Writers of the Shoah" 

*An essay for Ploughshares about the ways Mariateresa Di Lascia's work anticipated the #MeToo movement:

“The Lives of Women”

*Translations of Edith Bruck's poetry, including one poem that made it into The American Scholar's Read-Me-a-Poem podcast:

https://theamericanscholar.org/at-the-american-express-office-by-edith-bruck/

(More poetry translations published last month by The Common at Amherst College here)

*Translation of a short story by Edith Bruck that will appear in This Darkness Will Never End (and which won the Hunger Mountain Translation Prize)

https://hngrmtn.org/issues/hunger-mountain-27/translation/

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“Come ti senti quando parli in italiano?”

How do I feel when I speak Italian, you ask? Te lo dico! ... And thanks to Pensierini magazine for publishing my short piece on their website. Sometimes I also feel the need to write in Italian!

     “Come ti senti quando parli in italiano?”

Quando arrivai a Siena nel 1993, sono rimasta totalmente spaesata. Avevo studiato l’italiano all’università in USA ma nessuno mi aveva detto che a Siena (come in tutta la Toscana) la gente aspira la ‘C’. Sono arrivata come studentessa per un soggiorno di sei mesi e girando per Siena, non capivo e non mi facevo capire.

Di preciso, non avevo capito che si trattava non solamente di un paese dove la gente parlava in altra lingua; si trattava di un paese dove la gente pensava in un modo totalmente diverso dalla mentalità americana. Per esempio, quando entravo in un negozio e la commessa mi diceva, “Dimmi.” In America, nessuno dice “dimmi” quando entri in un negozio! Non bastava sostituire le parole – bisognava fare molto di più.

Per leggere il resto del testo//to read the rest, visit:

https://pensierini.blog/come-mi-sento-quando-parlo-in-italiano/libera/


Thursday, October 31, 2024

Daddy's garden

 

Overgrown now, yes, but he built a world. A world in flowers.

Monday, October 28, 2024

Everything you want to know about Italian lit

I took part in a blog project called Italian Lit Month that's coincided with the big, annual book fair in Frankfurt, where Italy is the guest of honor this year.

I wrote about my passion, which is studying the work of women writers recounting their experiences of survival during the Holocaust.

Other translators wrote about the works they've translated and translation book prizes and translating dialects and Italian poetry and amazing Italian novels you may have missed.

If you've ever wanted to know about Italian literature or Italian-English translation, this month of blogposts is a crash course.

We're nearing the end of it but the month of posts will be available for anyone who wants to catch up. You can also follow along on Twitter with the hashtag #ItalianLitMonth or #ItLit.

So let's get started!

https://glli-us.org/2024/10/01/italianlitmonth-n-1-italian-lit-month-a-chorus-of-voices/

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Sunday, October 06, 2024

We buried my mother a year ago today

How do you sum up a life? Normally with my mother, I think of a funny story. And maybe that’s not fair, though she was a character, wasn’t she? It’s not a fabrication on my part that when I told her I was going to have a baby, she said, “What? What? What? What? What?” (Yes, five whats. As I’ve said before, people born in Flatbush in 1938 are naturally enthusiastic). But this morning, a year since she’s left us, I’m thinking of the little gifts she came up with for Leo. Maybe all grandmothers do this but that first Christmas ornament she bought for him? It will live forever in the museum of my mind, if only there. A stately, white porcelain figure of Santa and his sack of toys, with Leo’s name etched in gold on the side. Her thinking? He needed a Christmas ornament right from the get-go, and she was right, of course. A nice one, too. Grandchild no. 8 but she’d lost none of her enthusiasm. I also think – veering off in a completely different direction, which she was known to do – of what she was like when she ritually watched the New York City marathon on TV, as I mentioned in a previous post. I remember when the first Kenyan won in the late 80s. That year, as she sat in her rocking chair smoking and watching while the runner began to overtake the lead pack, she edged forward as she shouted, “He’s going to do it! He’s going to do it!” I’ll never be able to completely ignore sports because of moments like that. The thrill of human achievement. The euphoria we can feel for someone we don’t even know. She wasn’t ever going to run a marathon, Pat, but she was going to enjoy that man’s victory, his perseverance, his dedication. Yet maybe it would be a better tribute to think of the ideas she endorsed because she knew how deep our longing could be. Specifically, my longing to go to liberal, activist, avant-garde Wesleyan, which would never have been her choice for a college, but she was happy for me, even though the atmosphere was a bit too bohemian for her tastes (“It’s very far-out”). This post hardly does her justice because I am leaving out the time she schooled me for suggesting we give a very old piece of clothing to a Goodwill donation, saying: “People who are poor like nice things, too.” The sting of regret faded, the lesson remained. I’m leaving out words like “discombobulated” and her instructions for a quick bath: “Get in, get out, get washed.” (Maybe not in that order). But nothing I can write can conjure up her spirit fully because she was truly alive – especially alive in raising four children in pre-modern times (which is to say, all the cooking, all the cleaning, nearly all the ferrying to activities, the Girl Scout leadering, the backyard shepherding, etc). Christmas? How she arranged it, with a thousand heartfelt, hand-selected gifts, it’s hard to imagine Heaven is as special as Christmas morning was at 236 Ohio Street. Her hobbies? Besides smoking, the New York Times crossword. Because she could fit that in between all of her other tasks. No matter how much I do for Leo, it will never approach what Pat did for us. Because she gave her whole self. I haven’t even touched on her conversational skills – she made chit-chatting seem like the reward you get for all of your hard work at day’s end (and good thing the kitchen phone’s cord could snake its way to the rocking chair in the living room). “Oh, he was a character,” she might say about someone we were discussing (take the compliment, buddy! You got Pat’s attention, and her good will). I scarcely know how to end this message because there are so many things I’m ignoring, except maybe I could ask a favor? If you're thinking of your mother right now, spend some time talking to her today – for me. Entertain her theories, put up with her smoking, probe her memories. I’ll live vicariously through you! But if that's not possible, maybe just read Marie Howe's poetry -- especially this line, "I am living. I remember you."

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