Skip to main content

Words Without Borders Logo

Words Without Borders Monagram
—
Discover by Country
—
Discover by Theme
—
Discover by Contributor
—
Surprise Me!
Read
Learn
Events
About
Follow Us
Go to instagram
Go to twitter
Go to facebook
Go to youtube
Read
—
Surprise Me!
Discover by Country
—
Discover by Theme
—
Discover by Contributor
—
Learn
Events
About
Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Identity

Portraits of Elisa Taber and Liliana Ancalao
Elisa Taber (left) and Liliana Ancalao (right)
Living Words: An Introduction to Five Contemporary Mapuche Texts
By Elisa Taber & Liliana Ancalao
Liliana Ancalao and Elisa Taber discuss the genocide of the Mapuche people, and how Mapuche writing both stitches together that open wound and recognizes the historical and cultural continuity of this people.
Translated from Spanish by Elisa Taber
Multilingual
The cover of Mithu Sanyal's Identitti alongside a portrait of translator Alta L. Price
Photo credit: Donnelly Marks
Translating Identity Politics
By Jaeyeon Yoo
When I first read Identitti, I thought, “Is the author using this in earnest or is this meant to be funny?”
This Language Called Kaaps: An Introduction
By Olivia M. Coetzee
Language is more than just a method of communication. It is about the ability to lay down roots, to settle into an identity, to have a place in history, in the present, and in the future. Language is…
Children of the Xam
By Khadija Tracey Heeger
Watch Khadija Tracey Heeger read her poem “Children of the Xam” in the original Kaaps.Poet Khadija Tracey Heeger honors a rich and complex heritage.Between the vertebrae of the Langeberg…
Translated from Kaaps by Olivia M. Coetzee & Khadija Tracey Heeger
Multilingual
Affirm
By Martin SIEP Muller
Watch the music video for “Affirm” performed by SIEP, in the original Kaaps.This rap performance by SIEP uplifts and speaks truth.I affirm the soul in each personI affirm the soul in each…
Translated from Kaaps by Andre Trantraal
Multilingual
Snake’s Hill
By Olivia M. Coetzee
JB was the one to start that fire inside my head.
Translated from Kaaps by the author
MultimediaMultilingual
Reckonings: The Queer Issue XII
By Susan Harris
This year we celebrate Pride Month with seven pieces depicting Queer characters confronting decisive moments.
A dark door cracked open to reveal bright red light
Photo by Dima Pechurin on Unsplash
Yun-Fan: Singing the Variety of Queer Life
By Wanning Chen
When I was twenty-three, I met my first girlfriend, who then went off with a man after just four months—and eventually married him.
Translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang
A landscape of dunes in Timimoun under a blue sky
Chettouh Nabil, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A Night in Timimoun
By Nina Bouraoui
It's your skin I feel sliding beneath my soapy palms.
Translated from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins
In the Shadows
By Olivia M. Coetzee
The rhythmic flow of Shadow Heights was something she often missed and longed for while she was in Joburg.
Translated from Kaaps by the author
Gustavo
By Xavier Stanziola
My departure had nothing to do with you or your brother.
Translated from Spanish by Alexander Aguayo
Theo
By Fahmi Mustaffa
I'm not like you, Pak.
Translated from Malay by Adriana Nordin Manan
The Forsaken
By Aichetou
Listen, all of you, to what will later be said of the Forsaken by one of their descendants.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
You Will Tell Them
By Mariem Mint Derwich
You will say to them that she sleeps in the calabash of worlds
Translated from French by Emma Ramadan
Multilingual
Say to the Tomb
By Bios Diallo
Here the poem ends
Translated from French by Emma Ramadan
Multilingual
On the Periphery
By Larissa Kyzer
The scope of the topics explored in this issue is, therefore, necessarily broad without being comprehensive.
Blue Days
By Fríða Ísberg
That same month, she realizes that she’s never going to stop striving as long as she’s in Reykjavik.
Translated from Icelandic by Larissa Kyzer
Young Russophonia: New Literature in Russian
By Hilah Kohen & Josephine von Zitzewitz
These writings spark immediate conversations through rapid-fire literary texts rather than typical online commentary.
Letter to Ukraine
By Danyil Zadorozhnyi
Like the border between the word leave / and the concept of returning
Translated from Russian by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler & Reilly Costigan-Humes
There Was No Adderall in the Soviet Union
By Olga Breininger
I am the same sort of export as a Kalashnikov rifle or our great suicidal writers.
Translated from Russian by Hilah Kohen
blurry image of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in St. Petersburg behind a canal
Murashko olga, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
About Time to Smile at Homeless People
By Dinara Rasuleva
Dinara Rasuleva questions received notions of home and national identity in this poem about her relationship to Russia.
Translated from Russian by Hilah Kohen
Multilingual
Stories from “Ings & Oughts”
By Alla Gorbunova
It wasn’t a plane at all, but a car flying through the sky.
Translated from Russian by Elina Alter
Multilingual
Three Observations, Untitled
By Ksenia Zheludova
The most horrible things, remember this, are incremental.
Translated from Russian by Josephine von Zitzewitz
MultimediaMultilingual
“Reality (Unfortunately?) Varies”: A Conversation Between Galina Rymbu and Ilya Danishevsky
By Galina Rymbu
It seems to me—perhaps naively—that poetry has the ability to examine things in a maximally authentic way.
Translated from Russian by Anne O. Fisher & Helena Kernan
A Slice of Writing by Nikkei and Tusán Peruvian Writers
By Jennifer Shyue
Some of them have often called upon their Chinese or Japanese roots; others have alighted upon the topic only a few times, if at all.
Simple Heart
By Augusto Higa Oshiro
Nobody knows why he went to such great lengths.
Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue
The Red Rooster and Inevitable Saint
By Julia Wong Kcomt
“She was hot, your aunt Carmen, / she didn’t look Chinese.”
Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue
Multilingual
Life Is a Pose
By Julio Villanueva Chang
In his spare time, he wears clothes.
Translated from Spanish by Nicolás Medina Mora
Here in Chorrillos
By Doris Moromisato
My eyes fill with rowboats
Translated from Spanish by Margaret Wright
Multilingual
The Final Stretch
By Siu Kam Wen
The old woman refused to wear any clothing she had not sewn herself.
Translated from Spanish by Julie Hempel
Four Short Poems
By Sui-Yun
I have licked the tip of evil
Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue
The Golden Children of Sexual Alchemy
By Tilsa Otta
Ever since our orgasms became supernatural, we’ve been taking better care of our energies.
Translated from Spanish by Jacob Steinberg
Multilingual
See-the-Sea
By Dina Salústio
Are all of us accidents wandering through other people’s lives?
Translated from Portuguese by Nina Perrotta
Islands Running across the Globe
By Manuel Brito-Semedo
Right from the start, Cabo Verdean concepts of identity and individuality were defined by this mixed reality: the African and the European, in all their diverse and contrasting characteristics.
Translated from Portuguese by Jethro Soutar
On Beginnings
By Filinto Elísio
Inert stone, atomic, / nuclear before life.
Translated from Portuguese by Jethro Soutar
Multilingual
A Form of African Identity
By Germano Almeida
It was only very gradually that we came to understand that the Europeans, out of malice or simple ignorance, had instilled in us our reluctance to accept our condition as Africans.
Translated from Portuguese by Stephen Henighan
Cabo Verde Is the Center of the World
By Germano Almeida
In those days the island of Boa Vista was the whole world.
Translated from Portuguese by Stephen Henighan
Lisbon – 1971
By Arménio Vieira
In point of fact, Lisbon was not waiting there [to greet us.
Translated from Portuguese by Eric M. B. Becker & Shook
Caviar, Champagne, and Fantasy
By Arménio Vieira
The Esplanada, thick with the scent of fragrant [DDT
Translated from Portuguese by Eric M. B. Becker & Shook
The Last Judgment
By Fátima Bettencourt
I was overcome by the unshakeable conviction that it was the end of the world.
Translated from Portuguese by Anna Kushner
Old Isidoro
By Luís Romano
As soon as he came around the bend at Passo Preto, he raised his pistol and fired into the air.
Translated from Cabo Verdean (Santo Antão Dialect) by Jeff Hessney
Multimedia
Beyond Representation: Life Writing by Women in Arabic
By Sawad Hussain & Nariman Youssef
One cannot write about real-life experiences from the place of the “I” without laying claim to a place in the world.
I Found Out I Was Dead
By João Paulo Cuenca
She’s the one who identified the body with your name, address, and document number.
Translated from Portuguese by Elizabeth Lowe
Who Dreams of Us?: New Swedish-Language Writing
By Saskia Vogel
Whose story gets to be told?
Two people walk through the snow with the sun rising behind mountains in the distance
Tadeáš Gregor, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
From “Aednan”
By Linnea Axelsson
What kind of home is it / where no one dares say / our son’s name
Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel
Multilingual
Interlude
By Mara Lee
He squinted at me, swaying in the wind. Blood or soil, he asked.
Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel
Event Horizon
By Balsam Karam
The sun rose over the mountaintop in a blaze of blue and green and so the day began.
Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel & Alice Olsson
From “Wretchedness”
By Andrzej Tichý
He said, this is real, and then he pulled up his shirt and showed us the scars under his arm.
Translated from Swedish by Nichola Smalley
Kopparberg Road 20
By Mathias Rosenlund
When you’ve always worked for a low wage, getting a higher wage is a challenge.
Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel
From “White Monkey”
By Adrian Perera
I say change is always painful, / someone has to be the first.
Translated from Swedish by Christian Gullette
Multilingual
Alhambra
By Johannes Anyuru
Writing is a post-traumatic symptom.
Translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson
From “Twenty-Five Thousand Miles of Nerves”
By Nino Mick
I want to reside in the hard and permanent / so I construct a suite of poems and a man to live inside
Translated from Swedish by Christian Gullette
Multilingual
Writing Against the Grain
By Alice Guthrie
The writers here are pushing the boundary of the known and working against the grain of the status quo.
Brooklyn Trilogy
By Eduardo Lago
Writers, true stories, wrong numbers, and chance: Eduardo Lago spins an homage to the late Paul Auster.
Translated from Spanish by Ernesto Mestre-Reed
The Utopian
By Ngo Tu Lap
A sleepwalker with nothing to lose or gain
Translated from Vietnamese by Martha Collins & Ngo Tu Lap
Learning Cyrillic
By David Albahari
Fridays I go to church. I do not go to pray.
Translated from Serbian by Ellen Elias-Bursać
Freedom Can Be a Nightmare: An Interview with Kader Abdolah
By Frits Abrahams
An exile's life is unstable. Ruled by fear, especially when you're so deeply involved with a language.
Translated from Dutch