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L-Blog-Post-February-24-which-k-lit-best-describes-your-love-life
Which K-Lit Best Describes Your Love Life?
Tuesday February 13, 2024
Whether you’re head-over-heels in love or over it all, our personality quiz will match you to the Korean story or poem that best reflects your current love life. Featuring work by Han Kang, Jeon Sam-hye, and others.
Upright piano painted with bright colored designs and portrait of Marilyn Monroe in the style of...
Looking at Translation with a Dominican “Marilyn Monroe”
Tuesday January 16, 2024
Frank Baez’s hymn to trans resilience, bilingually published alongside an author performance video and a social media account showing daily life in the Dominican Republic.
Two white toy sheep and one black toy sheep hanging from a mobile.
A Haitian Creole “Poem for Children with Trouble Sleeping”
Thursday December 21, 2023
Bringing Haitian poet Jean D'Amérique's dark twist on the lullaby into the classroom with contextual resources on contemporary Haiti. The poem is available in both Haitian Creole and English.
Two hummingbirds on a branch and leaves backlit by an amber glow of light.
A Cuban Love Poem Offers “Silence for You” across Two Languages
Tuesday November 21, 2023
What, in love, is real? What can lovers count on? Cuban author Pedro de Jesús grapples with these questions in a poem available in both Spanish and English. Contextual resources include a video on LGBTQ+ life in Cuba.
L-Blog-Post-November-23-campus-in-the-new-york-times
Campus in the New York Times!
Thursday November 2, 2023
In a New York Times article entitled Bringing the World Close, the writer Robert Ito describes Words Without Borders’ 2023 recent gala and quotes attendees on the transformative power of reading.
Portrait of author and translator Emiliana Bernard Stephenson
A “Kriol Soldier” Celebrates Afro-Caribbean Heritage
Tuesday October 24, 2023
Afro-Colombian writer Emiliana Bernard-Stephenson sings a song of praise to her mother tongue, a language first spoken by enslaved people on two islands off the coast of Colombia.
Open hand holding a round piece of wood with an eye drawn on it with the word yes in the center
“Seeing” Translation
Monday September 25, 2023
How is translated literature different from literature that has not been translated, and how should we approach reading and teaching literature in translation? Translators and educators are developing exciting new ways of…
WWB Campus Non Required Summer Reads 1
Our Top 6 Non-Required Summer Reads
Tuesday July 11, 2023
Here at WWB Campus, we give a lot of suggestions about what students might like to read, but how about their teachers? We scoured Tobias Carroll's recent Watchlist columns for global books that seemed fun and transporting.…
Male hand of a baseball player wearing white and blue pin striped uniform pants holding 2 baseballs....
From Cuba, a Tale of a Baseball-Playing Shape-Shifter
Tuesday May 23, 2023
Eduardo del Llano's witty, fantastical story “Swimming Upstream” is likely to interest both sports fans and those who, like its main character, fail to see the point. We offer teaching suggestions and contextual resources…
Multi colored abstract mural painting of two hands outreaching.
“I, too, want to return the punch”: 10 Inspiring Quotes by International Women Writers
Wednesday March 1, 2023
Looking for inspiration? These quotes from international women writers are perfect for Women’s History Month and beyond. Find out how these authors got started, learn about their creative process, and explore what they hope…
Translators David Young and Jiann I. Lin on Du Mu
Thursday June 30, 2022
The passages below were excerpted from the endnotes and introduction to Out on the Autumn River: Selected Poems of Du Mu, by David Young and Jiann I. Lin.
Meet the Creators of “Sharing”
Thursday June 30, 2022
This interview with the creators of Sharing took place over email: WWBC's Nadia Kalman sent questions to artist Xie Peng and author Duncan Jepson, who wrote back from Shanghai and Hong Kong.
A Sentimental Education: Selected Passages—Formative Experiences
Wednesday June 29, 2022
Below, you'll find a list of 15 passages depicting Nachi's formative experiences in A Sentimental Education. Students can work individually or in pairs to analyze the passages and create posters that include the passages…
The Trapped Boy: Sample Lesson Plan
Tuesday June 28, 2022
This lesson plan's activities are based on Teaching Idea #1: The Interplay of Structure and Mood for the short story “The Trapped Boy.”Length: 1-2 50-minute class sessionsGrade Levels: 10th-early collegeSubject: ELAStandards…
Teaching Uyghur Poetry: Updated
Wednesday June 22, 2022
This summer, Words Without Borders Campus published a post on teaching the poetry of Tahir Hamut, an ethnic Uyghur (pronounced we-ger) poet and filmmaker who is living in exile in Washington, D.C. following the Chinese government's…
11 Poems and Stories of Global Cities
Wednesday June 22, 2022
A coffee cup on a diner counter in Tokyo. By Osamu Kaneko.Ian Ross Singleton, a New York City author and English professor, was looking for literature to inspire students in their explorations of the city. Around the same…
Growing Up Asian, Bullying, and a Park Bench
Monday June 20, 2022
 A bench in a Parisian park. By M_Max. License: CC BY 2.0. “Yes, Sybille, I would like you to back off . . .”I didn’t allow myself to actually say it. But I really would have preferred it if she just went her own way.…
“The Wellspring That Relieves My Thirst”: South Korean Author Kim Bi on Writing Queer Literature
Monday June 20, 2022
Cut from a Different Cloth: Reading and Teaching Lu Min’s “Scissors, Shining”
Wednesday June 15, 2022
[caption id=attachment_20819 align=alignnone width=2560] A threaded needle. Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash.[/caption]I was extremely devoted to studying Master Song’s craft, surrounded by swaths of cloth and bits…
A Dominican “Self-Portrait” to Inspire Students’ Self-Reflections
Thursday June 2, 2022
Which experiences have a greater influence on us—our successes, or the times when we've been hurt?
Food in Fiction: A Lesson Plan Based on Koo Byung-Mo’s “Wizard Bakery”
Monday August 16, 2021
This lesson plan is based on Teaching Idea #1, Food in Fiction, for the South Korean YA novel excerpt Wizard Bakery. Students will closely read descriptions of magical foods from the story and use them as models for their…
Selected Passages from “Dori and Jina” (For Teaching Idea #2)
Monday March 22, 2021
These printable passages support Teaching Idea #2 for the Korean short story Dori and Jina.
How to be a Woman in Tehran: Sample Lesson Plan
Sunday January 17, 2021
This lesson plan is based on Teaching Idea #1 for Habibe Jafarian's personal essay How to Be a Woman in Tehran. (You can find the Teaching Ideas by clicking on the Learn toggle, and then navigating to the far-right…
Nucksal’s “Earning My Keep” in Translation
Thursday August 13, 2020
Jeong Ho-Seung's poem Earning My Keep has a hip-hop counterpart: a song of the same name by the Korean artist Nucksal. Below, you will find the poem in translation from former WWB Graduate Intern Olan Munson.
New from the Philippines: Film, Identity, and Representation
Sunday November 3, 2019
What are the cultural divides within our countries? How well can we ever understand one another across those divides? A Filipino poem about an indigenous boy, published in this month's Words Without Borders, grapples…
Sleepless Homeland: Sample Lesson Plan
Thursday May 25, 2017
This lesson plan's activities are based on Teaching Idea #1: Being Lost, for Carmen Boullosa's poem Sleepless Homeland. Some elements of the format are based on Allen Singer's CCS/Danielson template, available…
The Guest: Sample Lesson Plan
Monday May 22, 2017
This lesson plan's activities are based on Teaching Idea #2 (Labels”) for The Guest. The format is based on models from the National Council of Teachers of English.Length: 1-2 50-minute class sessionsGrade Levels: 10-11Subject:…
Euphoria is a Kind of Drug: A Conversation with Translator Humphrey Davies
Wednesday March 23, 2016
When I first asked Humphrey Davies about what it was like to translate Two Million People in the Square, he did not remember having translated it.Working on a translation, while living through a revolution, can put one in…
Translating “The Last of the Bunch”
Tuesday December 1, 2015
Below, you'll find an intermediate draft of Chip Rossetti's translation of the first few pages of The Last of the Bunch, along with some comments on the changes he made as the translation progressed.
Translating a Peony, by Ilya Kaminsky
Monday October 27, 2014
The challenges of translation from Asian languages are formidable. Here is an example of a brief poem by Kancho translated by various hands. First in the original:kara-oto mo sukoshi iitaki botan kana.And in word-by-word…