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Reading Wednesday
Nov. 25th, 2021 12:29 amWhat have you finished reading?
Pirate Latitudes. See last week's post.
What are you currently reading?
I started To Dare Imagining: Rojava Revolution, a collection of essays on Rojava from about 2016. Ohhhh boy. I don't know if it's the original texts which are heavy (many are interviews with Kurds, likely in Turkish, Kurdish or Arabic maybe even) or the translations which are bad, but it's pretty unreadable. I think the introduction wasn't too bad, and a short excerpt from Abdullah Öcalan wasn't too bad either, but otherwise this is like reading mud. It's also a lot of repeating the same point that it's a feminist revolution, which Changes Everything. (I mean, it does, but I need meat on that bone.) I had to stop midway through due to it becoming pretty boris, though I will power through to the end. (Especially since I "borrowed" my copy from a friend in Montréal, and I should make it worth it...)
So I switched to Rouge, jaune et vert from Bolivian-Canadian writer Alejandro Saravia. I was selling zines at Expozine in Montréal this weekend. Across from my table was Éditions Urubu, which specialize in translating Latin-American fiction to French. So I ask the person tabling there if they had any noir novels, because I had just seen the Latin Noir (geo-fenced to Canada only, sorry Amrikans) documentary. He says no, we don't, so I purse saying that some of these novels deal with countries either under or coming out of dictatorship, so he says, this book here, it talks about a Bolivian soldier was forced to commit atrocities, and how he's dealing with the memory of that in Montréal. I'm staring at the book because the books' colours (which are also its title) are the Kurdish colours, but you know maybe that's the Bolivian flag? I do a quick mental check, no, that isn't the Bolivian flag colours, it's red white and blue. (I finally looked it up online, I was wrong. That's totally the Bolivian flag's colours.) I ask him to say more and he tells me that it also blends the protagonist trying to reconnect with his Quechua language roots, and also deals with a freedom fighter named Bolivia that he meets in Montréal, who happens to be... A Kurdish woman. $20 has never come out of my wallet faster. A few minutes later I went back for a second copy, to give to Kurdish friends who don't speak French, but who are moving to Paris, so they can gift it to someone other Kurdish friends they make there. (I've since then discovered that there's also an English translation so if I'm quick enough I might be able to send them off with that too...)
So I started on this book and it's just the most wild prose, the protagonist riding the Montréal métro where he tries to connect with lost souls (or his own, really) in his broken Quecha, riding the electricity from northern Québec powering Montréal's steel intestines, which themselves bind the city's refugees and immigrant cultures, everyone in search of some sort of redemption or dreams. Okay it might sound like some pretty liberal multi-culti Canadiana tripe when I describe it like that but the writing works. It's just so exciting to read. We'll see where the story actually goes when I get past a couple chapters.
Pirate Latitudes. See last week's post.
What are you currently reading?
I started To Dare Imagining: Rojava Revolution, a collection of essays on Rojava from about 2016. Ohhhh boy. I don't know if it's the original texts which are heavy (many are interviews with Kurds, likely in Turkish, Kurdish or Arabic maybe even) or the translations which are bad, but it's pretty unreadable. I think the introduction wasn't too bad, and a short excerpt from Abdullah Öcalan wasn't too bad either, but otherwise this is like reading mud. It's also a lot of repeating the same point that it's a feminist revolution, which Changes Everything. (I mean, it does, but I need meat on that bone.) I had to stop midway through due to it becoming pretty boris, though I will power through to the end. (Especially since I "borrowed" my copy from a friend in Montréal, and I should make it worth it...)
So I switched to Rouge, jaune et vert from Bolivian-Canadian writer Alejandro Saravia. I was selling zines at Expozine in Montréal this weekend. Across from my table was Éditions Urubu, which specialize in translating Latin-American fiction to French. So I ask the person tabling there if they had any noir novels, because I had just seen the Latin Noir (geo-fenced to Canada only, sorry Amrikans) documentary. He says no, we don't, so I purse saying that some of these novels deal with countries either under or coming out of dictatorship, so he says, this book here, it talks about a Bolivian soldier was forced to commit atrocities, and how he's dealing with the memory of that in Montréal. I'm staring at the book because the books' colours (which are also its title) are the Kurdish colours, but you know maybe that's the Bolivian flag? I do a quick mental check, no, that isn't the Bolivian flag colours, it's red white and blue. (I finally looked it up online, I was wrong. That's totally the Bolivian flag's colours.) I ask him to say more and he tells me that it also blends the protagonist trying to reconnect with his Quechua language roots, and also deals with a freedom fighter named Bolivia that he meets in Montréal, who happens to be... A Kurdish woman. $20 has never come out of my wallet faster. A few minutes later I went back for a second copy, to give to Kurdish friends who don't speak French, but who are moving to Paris, so they can gift it to someone other Kurdish friends they make there. (I've since then discovered that there's also an English translation so if I'm quick enough I might be able to send them off with that too...)
So I started on this book and it's just the most wild prose, the protagonist riding the Montréal métro where he tries to connect with lost souls (or his own, really) in his broken Quecha, riding the electricity from northern Québec powering Montréal's steel intestines, which themselves bind the city's refugees and immigrant cultures, everyone in search of some sort of redemption or dreams. Okay it might sound like some pretty liberal multi-culti Canadiana tripe when I describe it like that but the writing works. It's just so exciting to read. We'll see where the story actually goes when I get past a couple chapters.