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Migration

Curved asphalt road on a foggy day in Lebanon
Photo by Dorsa Masghati on Unsplash
A Child’s Smile
By Jadd Hilal
After a dozen or so bombings, Jahid, like my mother had before him, decided we would flee.
Translated from French by Lara Vergnaud
Multilingual
Illuminated highways in Kyiv at night
Photo by Levi Kyiv on Unsplash
a moving grove
By Iryna Shuvalova
go escape while you can go escape
Translated from Ukrainian by Uilleam Blacker
MultimediaMultilingual
A river winds through the hilly green countryside in northern Sweden
Photo by Fredrik Posse on Unsplash
The Same River Twice: Notes on Reading, Time, and Translation
By Saskia Vogel
I have been opening this book since 2018 and over the years, I have become many different readers.
Portraits of Yoko Tawada and Margaret Mitsutani
The National Book Award Interviews: Yoko Tawada & Margaret Mitsutani
By Words Without Borders
“We’re living in a world where both languages and people are constantly in flux. In this novel, I wanted to focus on a small group of people making their way through that world.”
Afro-Italian Women in Translation: An Introduction
By Candice Whitney, Barbara Ofosu-Somuah, Aaron Robertson & Hope Campbell Gustafson
What is national literature and how is it defined? Often, when one thinks of a particular nation or language, they imagine a specific phenotype tied to a historical narrative. A cursory Google search…
An empty playground with a merry go round
Photo by Loegunn Lai on Unsplash
My Home Is Where I Am
By Igiaba Scego
Somali-Italian writer Igiaba Scego recalls her childhood experiences in the Italian educational system in this memoir.
Translated from Italian by Aaron Robertson
Soumaila Sacko: Story of the Good Life
By Djarah Kan
But if you drink and breathe and sweat and love in a country that is no longer yours, then you are not a migrant. You are a man.
Translated from Italian by Candice Whitney
Bambi
By Ubah Cristina Ali Farah
In your opinion, why'd he do it?
Translated from Italian by Hope Campbell Gustafson
We Cried a River of Laughter
By Marie Moïse
Writer Marie Moïse describes her search for her roots and traces her family’s history of cross-Atlantic displacement.I spent my youth seeking to recover my roots, which were severed by migration…
Translated from Italian by Barbara Ofosu-Somuah
Movement and Stasis
By July Blalack
Mauritanian literature foregrounds characters on the move.
Outsider Mode
By Ahmed Isselmou
“The central server is under attack and receiving commands to self-destruct.”
Translated from Arabic by Katharine Halls
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
Adabai
By Cheikh Nouh
Their nayffara is a flutelike instrument heavy with history, deeply immersed in sorrow.
Translated from Arabic by Sawad Hussain
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
Barzakh
By Moussa Ould Ebnou
What you are witnessing is the last face of the Earth.
Translated from Arabic by July Blalack
Al-Nar Street
By Zeinab Belail
Women are forbidden from setting foot in the swamp.
Translated from Arabic by Nesrin Amin
MultimediaMultilingual
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
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
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
Across Mountains and Valleys: Stories of Migration from the Kinnaur and Spiti Valleys
By Arshia Sattar
Despite their specificity, these tales transcend the places that produced them and throb with a universal appeal.
The Story of Sunni and Bhunku
By Himalayan Oral Tradition
Why, oh why, did you not come back immediately?
Translated from Lahouli by Noor Zaheer
The Girl Who Turned into a Crocodile
By Himalayan Oral Tradition
She struggled and fought back and tried to save herself but could not overcome the great crocodile that had taken hold of her.
Translated from Lahouli by Noor Zaheer
When the Deer Moved Away
By Himalayan Oral Tradition
Deeku refused to understand the close bond between the humans and the deer and their dependence on each other.
Translated from Lahouli by Noor Zaheer
Nomads at Home
By KG Hutchins
The stories in this collection paint a complicated picture of Mongolia.
Aquarium
By Ölziitögs Luvsandorj
When I bought this aquarium I didn't realize I was preparing my own casket.
Translated from Mongolian by Sainbayar Gundsambuu & KG Hutchins
Multilingual
Vengeance
By Norov Dalkhaa
These were not the eyes of a dog.
Translated from Mongolian by Sainbayar Gundsambuu & KG Hutchins
MultimediaMultilingual
Solitude
By Erdene Seng
“Damn it! What the hell is going on?”
Translated from Mongolian by Kenneth Linden
Dismissed
By Zaure Batayeva
Who needs Kazakh? We are moving to Russia anyway.
Translated from Kazakh by Zaure Batayeva & Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Writing by Kazakh Women
By Shelley Fairweather-Vega & Zaure Batayeva
Kazakhstan is the largest country by landmass to emerge from the breakup of the Soviet Union aside from Russia itself, but it has had an undersized impact on world literature.
The Beskempir
By Zira Naurzbayeva
It was the old grandmas themselves, each and every one of them, who were most interesting to me.
Translated from Russian by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
MultimediaMultilingual
The Nanny
By Aigul Kemelbayeva
The technological age regulates social relations with its robotic fingers, and it does not give a damn about your naturally noble spirit.
Translated from Kazakh by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Recalculating the Hexagon: The New French Literature
By Susan Harris
These writers have migrated geographically and, in some cases, linguistically.
from “The Eagle”
By Aziz Chouaki
Boulevard Barbès, Rochechouart, like a film clip, Arabs, blacks, half-whites.
Translated from French by Lulu Norman
Johnny Rotten, Ari Up, Ian Curtis, Joe Strummer
By Négar Djavadi
Because punk is made so people like you will look at people like me.
Translated from French by Tina Kover
Motherhoods
By Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse
My son now despises me.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
from “Muslim: A Novel”
By Zahia Rahmani
I was the daughter of a tainted man.
Translated from French by Lara Vergnaud
Hot Chocolate
By Rachid O.
I was thirteen years old, it was time to steal.
Translated from French by Emma Ramadan
The Man with a Guava Tree
By Shumona Sinha
“Why? Wasn’t there a guava tree at the other guy’s place?”
Translated from French by Roland Glasser
There Is No Map: The New Italian(s)
By Alta L. Price
Who is Italian, what is the Italian language, and who deserves to write in it?
Barbie
By Gabriella Kuruvilla
He was fascinated with India: I represented its Italian branch, easily accessible.
Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards
Multilingual
The Act of Naming
By Maaza Mengiste
How can we grieve for those we cannot identify?
Two Untitled Prose Poems
By Giampiero Neri
Exile is accompanied by the idea of solitude.
Translated from Italian by Martha Cooley & Antonio Romani
Listening to Silence
By Laila Wadia
“I gallop in English, I am a towering dervish in Urdu, and Hindi is my Kama Sutra. I am still on all fours in Italian.”
Translated from Italian by Sole Anatrone
Multilingual
From “Goldfish Don’t Live in Puddles”
By Marco Truzzi
“Trailers aren’t usually known to speak.”
Translated from Italian by André Naffis-Sahely
Multilingual
Three Poems from “Tattoos”
By Eva Taylor
on the atlas of my skin / your names
Translated from Italian by Olivia E. Sears
Multilingual
From “Lampedusa Snow”
By Lina Prosa
I stand like an African at the door of an entrance / that doesn’t exist.
Translated from Italian by Nerina Cocchi
Cous Cous Klan
By Tahar Lamri
I leave to my parents their portable country, so magnificent in their memory and in the stories they tell.
Translated from Italian by Robert Elliot
I am leaving you Europe
By Gëzim Hajdari
Your ruins no longer enchant me.
Translated from Italian by Patrick Barron
MultimediaMultilingual
Italy and the Literature of Immigration
By Francesco Durante
Why has the memory of this body of literature been so appallingly suppressed in Italy?
Translated from Italian by Antony Shugaar
The Other Body / The Other Home
By Adonis
Migration is another name for exile made gentler by the alphabet.
Translated from Arabic by Ammiel Alcalay & Kamal Boullata