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Writers on Education

In this collection, originally featured in the November 2014 issue of Words Without Borders, we celebrate the launch of our new education site, WWB Campus, with three essays on the discovery of literature. Mexico’s Valeria Luiselli recalls learning to read in an alienating Seoul, China’s Can Xue juggles fairy tales and Marxism, and Abdel-Moneim Ramadan reflects on a poetic education.

“The Fair-haired Princess” and Serious Literature

An advanced modern reader acts like a detective.

Translated from Chinese by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping

Multilingual

Building a New World

By Valeria Luiselli

Perhaps language, especially written and read, acquaints time with space.

A duplicate black-and-white portrait of Walt Whitman as an older man sporting a bushy beard.

Photo by Mathew Benjamin Brady, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Walt Whitman and Me: Notes on a Poetic Education

By Abdel-Moneim Ramadan

I was possessed by memory and forgetfulness and by Arabic poetry.

Translated from Arabic by Michael Beard & Adnan Haydar