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Mexico

The covers of the books featured in the list
Your #IWD2023 Reading List
By Words Without Borders
In honor of International Women’s Day 2023, WWB recommends 10 forthcoming books written and translated by women and published by small presses.
The covers of the books featured in the list
The Best Books of 2022—And What We’re Looking Forward to in 2023
By Words Without Borders
Our staff, contributors, and board members share their favorite translated books of the year and the titles they’re looking forward to in 2023.
An old, sepia toned photograph of a young girl
Photo by Robin Myers
Hosts and Guests
By Robin Myers
Translation, an obsessive interpretive art in which the boundaries between guest and host are tenderly and strenuously unstable, is my constant companion while I learn what it means to build a life in a country and culture different from the one I was…
Multimedia
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist
The Watchlist: November 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books in translation from Denmark, Argentina, Palestine, Mexico, and Poland.
Sculpture of Coyolxauhqui
who were these goddesses
By Jeannette L. Clariond
For days, / years, they walked with jade beneath their tongues, seeking / home.
Translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee
MultimediaMultilingual
July 2022 Poetry Collection Feature
8 Poetry Collections in Translation to Read in 2022
By Words Without Borders
Recent and forthcoming poetry in translation from Mexico, South Korea, Croatia, Haiti, and more.
Tarot cards from the Rider Waite Tarot deck
Photo by Viva Luna Studios on Unsplash
The Presentiment
By Emiliano Monge
I like to imagine that, in this defining moment, as my grandfather struggled with the dead man’s sinews, he was able to calm his rage for a moment and laugh.
Translated from Spanish by Frank Wynne
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist: The Blunder, Carnality, Of Saints and Miracles,...
The Watchlist: July 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books from Cameroon, Mexico, Japan, Spain, Sweden, and Kazakhstan.
Dusty piano
Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash
Inside “Outside Music”
By Eric M. B. Becker
A playlist for Hernán Bravo Varela's eulogy for his father and the music that he loved
Multimedia
Score of Anold Schoenberg's Transfigured Night
Outside Music
By Hernán Bravo Varela
Anything audible can be remembered.
Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
Multimedia
whitewashed exterior of santo crist crhuch in veracruz mexico
© Alejandro Borbolla. Used under Creative Commons license.
Life’s Not Worth a Thing
By Fernanda Melchor
He was as cool as ice, the blue-eyed motherfucker even offered us a drink.
Translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes
The book covers of Animals in Our Days, Brisbane, Flowers of Lhasa, Radio Siga, Linea Nigra, and...
The Watchlist: May/June 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends noteworthy new books translated from Tibetan, Vietnamese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, and Croatian.
The book covers of At the Edge of the Woods, When Women Kill, People from Bloomington, Let Us Believe...
The Watchlist: April 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends noteworthy new books translated from Ukrainian, Indonesian, Persian, Japanese, and Spanish.
The Watchlist: January 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books in translation from Mexico, Norway, Haiti, Argentina, and Japan.
Nuestra Ciudad: Writing the City in Spanish
By Ulises Gonzales
Today, a young writer working in Spanish arrives in New York City to find no shortage of role models.
Toward Our Common Destruction: Humans and the Environment
By Eric M. B. Becker
The protagonist of this month’s work is the natural world in its multitudes.
In Puget Sound
By Isabel Zapata
before their paths divided, they formed, together, three glints of light and shadow moving on at last
Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
The City and the Writer: In Mexico City with Carmen Boullosa
By Carmen Boullosa
The city has devoured itself over and over again.
Translated by Samantha Schnee
Climates: On Environment
By Susan Harris
Global warming manifests in obvious ways.
Liberty and Hope
By Francisco de la Mora
So this is how it all ends . . .
Translated from Spanish by Nina Perrotta
Peripatetics: The Essays of Jazmina Barrera, Karen Villeda, and Mariana Oliver
By Charlotte Whittle
These are essays with a roving gaze whose authors travel through geographic and intellectual spaces with the same ease with which we used to walk around in New York.
Özdamar’s Tongue
By Mariana Oliver
Özdamar knew that arriving in a country with no return ticket meant voluntarily surrendering to an indeterminate foreignness.
Translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches
Visegrád
By Karen Villeda
Women were confined to reading prayer books and religious hymns. And they wrote in the margins. Centuries went by. Those marginalia are, in fact, the books I need to read.
Translated from Spanish by Charlotte Whittle
Yaquina Head
By Jazmina Barrera
Robert Louis Stevenson says that to tour lighthouses is “to visit past centuries.”
Translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Morning Conversation
By Milena Solot
Although I wasn't really worried. I mean not really worried about him; you know what I mean?
Joyful, Painful, Surreal: Life As a Parent
By Karen M. Phillips
The intensity of the parent-child relationship, with its high emotional stakes, life-and-death responsibility, and inescapable physical proximity, makes for powerful stories.
The World at Home: US Writing in Translation
By Susan Harris
This issue is not a departure but a continuation.
House Taken Over
By Yuri Herrera
The house knew how to determine what was important.
Translated from Spanish by Lisa M. Dillman
Multilingual
And What If Love Is Stronger? The Queer Issue
By Susan Harris
In this troubling context, the need for portrayals of queer lives around the world becomes even more urgent.
Miss Eddy
By Milena Solot
He was a candy you wanted to pop in your mouth and suck real slow.
Translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
The Egyptian Tomb
By Beatriz Espejo
Every time she visited, she felt a crushing weariness, as though her entire life were caving in on her.
Translated from Spanish by Cecilia Ross
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Joe
By Francisco de la Mora & José Luis Pescador Huerta
You have not yet realized that you are misunderstanding everything.
Translated by Gabriela Mejan
Comics and Graphic Narratives: A Global Cultural Commons
By Dominic Davies
Comics themselves have a role to play in the construction of a more globally aware social consciousness.
First Read—From “The Gringo Champion” by Aura Xilonen
By Aura Xilonen and Andrea Rosenberg
And to think I swore I’d stay out of trouble on this side of the world.
Learn
Bridging Distances: Three Hispanic Canadian Authors
By María José Giménez
Writing by authors of Latin American descent living in Canada is seldom read, taught, or reviewed beyond the country’s borders.
María Times Seven
By Martha Batiz
It was by accident that Doña Toña decided to sell her daughters’ tears.
Translated from Spanish by the author
The Cornerist
By Laia Jufresa
The skyscraper where I grew up was demolished decades ago and supplanted by a thousand-story housing block.
Translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes
Multilingual
By the Power Vested in Me
By Yuri Herrera
The newlyweds reached his table and Romero hid his repugnance behind hypocritical congratulations.
Translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Multilingual
Sor Juana and Other Monsters
By Luis Felipe Fabre
All Sor Juana scholars concur that Sor Juana was a monster.
Translated from Spanish by John Pluecker
The Savage Editors
By Agustín Goenaga
You have to be a savage to play this role. It’s essential.
Translated from Spanish by Thomas Bunstead
Mexico Interrupted
By Thomas Bunstead & Sophie Hughes
There’s an obvious irony in trying to promote diverse Mexican literatures by means of a handful of texts.
The Beast Has Died
By Bef
“Juárez has died, Your Majesty.”
Translated from Spanish by Brian L. Price
The Book of Denial
By Ricardo Chávez Castañeda
This story is the worst story in the world—it's just terrible.
Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
Building a New World
By Valeria Luiselli
Perhaps language, especially written and read, acquaints time with space.
The Queer Issue V: Impressions from a Passing Train
By Rohan Kamicheril
The appeal of the Queer Issue is in seeing that great ambition writ small, in discovering the swarm of details and experience that cohere into the big picture of world writing.
Queens Football
By Alberto Salcedo Ramos
“You're so gay you even want to get it on with men in cartoon strips!”
Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
For Nina
By Javier Malpica
I opened it and wrote the first date, and what would be the first chapter of that extraordinary life that was my own.
Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
Modotti: A Woman of the Twentieth Century
By Ángel De la Calle
The epitaph on her tombstone was written by Pablo Neruda.
Translated by Matt Madden
Violence and Drug-Trafficking in Mexico
By Juan Villoro
In Mexico, people will pay up to $70,000 dollars for a license to hunt and kill a bighorn sheep. Killing a man is much cheaper.
Translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
LearnMultilingual
The Mystery of the Parakeet, the Rooster, and the Nanny Goat
By Fabrizio Mejía Madrid
The parakeet is cocaine, the rooster is the marijuana and the nanny goat is an AK-47 assault rifle.
Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
LearnMultilingual
Notes on a Zombie Cataclysm
By Luis Felipe Fabre
The authorities insist they are taking / appropriate steps / to control the plague of zombies
Translated from Spanish by Amanda Hopkinson
LearnMultilingual
Sleepless Homeland
By Carmen Boullosa
In which junkie’s syringe did you become trapped, my Homeland?
Translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee
LearnMultilingual
Holding Pattern
By Juan Villoro
“Villoro always cuts through genres with the precision of a scalpel.”—Javier Marías
Translated from Spanish by Lisa M. Dillman
Multilingual
Practice for Hangmen
By Ambar Past
“Ambar Past’s poetry is born out of the beauty of Chiapas.” —Elena Poniatowska
Translated from Spanish by Munda Tostón
Multilingual
Readymade
By Álvaro Enrigue
He was apt to score unbelievable goals whenever he could keep his balance on the field, something that didn't always happen: occasionally he fell over while fighting for the ball and couldn't get back up again because he was too drunk.
Translated from Spanish by Anna Kushner
Three abandoned Happy Meal containers from McDonald's
Photo by Meghan Hessler on Unsplash.
A Failed Journey
By Aura Estrada
They warned her that one more offense against good behavior and the promised trip to the promised land (the United States) would be cancelled . . .
Translated from Spanish by Mónica de la Torre
LearnMultilingual
My Madre, Pure as Cumulus Clouds
By Liza Bakewell
In this essay, Liza Bakewell tries to figure out what the word madre, or mother, really means in Mexican culture. She looks, in particular, at mentadas de madre, or insults about mothers.
Learn
Marías Mazahuas
By Fausto Guadarrama López
Where do you go, Marías, where do you go?
Translated from Spanish by Earl Shorris & Sylvia Sasson Shorris
Learn
Nothing Remains Empty
By Juan Gregorio Regino
There is a place in the Universe / where the memory of time / is recorded.
Translated from Spanish by Earl Shorris & Sylvia Sasson Shorris
Learn
A rebozo photographed in black and white.

By Mónica Morales. License: CC by 2.0 Access at: https://flic.kr/p/rP5TJ

Purépecha Mother
By Gilberto Jerónimo Mateo
This poem from an indigenous Purépecha author celebrates the heroism of a seemingly ordinary woman.
Translated from Spanish by Earl Shorris & Sylvia Sasson Shorris
Learn
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