Early access for premium subscribers! Kat and Phoebe discuss poetry in translation (or, aggressively, NOT), sensitivity readers, and whether we could please stop fighting about the word "women". Isabella Wang's screed against translation (screenshot)
I just pray that the rise of sensitivity readers doesn't eliminate my favourite literary trope, American characters that were obviously written by Brits, or vice versa. There's something about an author who didn't bother to do the bare minimum of research into cultural differences between the U.K. and U.S. that never fails to amuse me.
For example, I love when books are like, "Gemma stopped at a petrol station just outside Chicago to change a tyre and buy a cheese and onion pasty. Her gran was in hospital in Manhattan, and as long as her car was working, she could be there in two hours. She received an SMS from her friend Maisie, whom she had met in sixth form. 'Saw the lad you fancy at M&S today. He was looking well fit. Told him to give you a cheeky snog at the Christmas do. x' Gemma felt chuffed, closed the boot of her car, and got back on the road behind a lorry."
or
"Carlos was your average suburban English teenager. When he wasn't playing soccer or studying for math class, he was sneaking beers with his friends behind the bleachers (even though he wouldn't be 21 for a few years). As a senior in high school, he worried about the SATs and which college to attend. However, everything changed the day before prom. What should've been an ordinary afternoon for Carlos: buying a Hershey's candy bar from the bodega down the street from his house before heading to his girlfriend's apartment, had somehow gone horribly, horribly wrong. It wasn't until Carlos frantically dialed 911 that he realized his life would never be the same. He hung up and called his mom instead."
If any sensitivity readers are reading this, do not take this away from me. It's all I have.
Ironically, when you're reading a book in a language that isn't your native language, it can sometimes be confusing if the author doesn't italicize or contextualize a foreign word. It's something I've experienced occasionally when reading in other languages, and it's something that friends of mine whose native language is not English will complain about. There are millions of people around the world whose native language is not English who nonetheless read books written in English. The supposed dichotomy of white Anglophones who don't understand, say, a Mandarin word, and BIPOC non-native English speakers who will get it seems awfully reductive.
On “women” definition, the word was created as a biological “technical” term for 50% of population that is born as female. The term has important use in computer programming for health insurance companies that mail notification of recommended breast-cancer screening for age group X. Likewise for men and prostate cancer screening. And other data use downstream depends on correct use of “women” as biological. If the activists desire a word as an umbrella category for [biological women + others], then they should create that new word instead of stealing and mis-using an existing word. I suggest “womin” as umbrella category and as it doesn’t contain “man” and “men”; that should make the activists happy. And by the way, only women can become pregnant. In 2022, the science of “transgender” surgical procedure does not enable pregnancy.
There’s so many ideas that popped up while listening to this episode, and how those who want sensitivity readers for fiction are the same types of people who require certain narratives to fit political agendas and will completely ignore those who don’t -- or will argue that the person in the identity category who doesn’t fit the agenda is somehow not as worthy as the others in that category who do.
What comes to mind are a couple instances of this -- a friend of mine who is a black state trooper in Maryland who faced crazy racism from his department, and when he filed a complaint, the department cooked up an internal investigation against HIM that left him suspended without pay for four years. The NAACP wouldn’t take his case because they said representing a black cop didn’t fit their agenda. I wrote an essay about his experience in 2019, and the state police dropped their case against him, gave him four years of back pay, and gave him his job back. (Just found out this week that the Dept of Justice is opening an investigation on MD state police because of department racism against black troopers, citing Matin’s case). But with the NAACP -- the idea was: “you can be black, or you can be a cop, but you can’t be both.”
And on another note -- in the “patient community” -- if a person doesn’t fit the narrative of “owning” their disease, and if they aren’t fighting the ableist “system” that seeks to oppress their identity of disease as a protected minority, then that person’s perspective not only doesn’t count -- but is considered offensive for not falling in line with the narrative, and if they overcome disease, then they can no longer relate to those currently suffering. The idea becomes more so how to protect the right to suffer rather than demand funding research to eliminate their suffering.
Anyway -- that was long winded, sorry! -- but it all comes back to sensitivity readers: this one person in this one identity must represent the perspective of everyone in that identity category, and if someone in that category disagrees with the sensitivity reader’s analysis, then they aren’t black enough or disabled enough or whatever else.
That Isabella Wang tweet exemplifies a phenomenon I'm so fascinated by: authors whose online personas are that they are outwardly contemptuous of people who may want to read them and the readers and booksellers who absolutely love that and think good allyship means promoting said authors.
Foreign words: Much ado about nothing. One can easily Google or use a translation app to look up words not already identifiable by context.
Re, insensitivity, I remember reading Chang-Rae Lee's best-selling and critically acclaimed novel Aloft over a decade ago and found the author woefully ill-informed about Italian Americans (who are proud of their heritage and do not change their last names, particularly not on suburban Long Island, where they are well represented), and the landscaping business, which is extremely cut-throat, and represented as an inherited piece of cake.
More recently, I just finished Chantal V. Johnson's Post-Traumatic, where every single white woman character, excepting the shrink who ties it all up in a bow at the end, is an over-privileged idiot. I know such women, with inherited wealth and well-employed spouses, are common in the "helping" professions where the narrator worked. But these are the only kind of white women the narrator seemed to see in New York. An otherwise interesting book failed itself with easy, cheap shots at a straw horse target.
PS, when I lived in Brooklyn it was a majority BIPOC borough, as is Providence (70%) where I live now.
The conservative internet is all abuzz with this Berkeley professor testifying before Congress. Personally I think she demonstrates every worst impulse in the critique you gave in the pod today and recent writings and discussions. How hard is it to say, I acknowledge there are other situations but this is nearly exclusively a woman's issue and use woman or female accordingly. I'm personally ideologically opposed to her but it's such a self own.
I was reading a book earlier this year (99 Nights in Logar) that was kind of an interesting experience because though it was written in English it felt like it was not written with a western audience in mind (one plot point involves a child wedding that feels like a joyous occasion), and unless you read a lot of old stuff, that’s actually a pretty unusual experience. But then the second-to-last chapter was entirely in untranslated Pashto and I realized that it was very much written with a western audience in mind, just that the author feels contempt for the audience, and that is not an unusual experience at all.
I can’t think of many examples where untranslated passages enhanced rather than detracted from a book I was reading, and I’m someone who likes languages.
Meanwhile, one of my mother’s major pet peeves is when foreign words are italicized in a text. She feels like the publisher expects her to be too dumb to get things from context.
I just pray that the rise of sensitivity readers doesn't eliminate my favourite literary trope, American characters that were obviously written by Brits, or vice versa. There's something about an author who didn't bother to do the bare minimum of research into cultural differences between the U.K. and U.S. that never fails to amuse me.
For example, I love when books are like, "Gemma stopped at a petrol station just outside Chicago to change a tyre and buy a cheese and onion pasty. Her gran was in hospital in Manhattan, and as long as her car was working, she could be there in two hours. She received an SMS from her friend Maisie, whom she had met in sixth form. 'Saw the lad you fancy at M&S today. He was looking well fit. Told him to give you a cheeky snog at the Christmas do. x' Gemma felt chuffed, closed the boot of her car, and got back on the road behind a lorry."
or
"Carlos was your average suburban English teenager. When he wasn't playing soccer or studying for math class, he was sneaking beers with his friends behind the bleachers (even though he wouldn't be 21 for a few years). As a senior in high school, he worried about the SATs and which college to attend. However, everything changed the day before prom. What should've been an ordinary afternoon for Carlos: buying a Hershey's candy bar from the bodega down the street from his house before heading to his girlfriend's apartment, had somehow gone horribly, horribly wrong. It wasn't until Carlos frantically dialed 911 that he realized his life would never be the same. He hung up and called his mom instead."
If any sensitivity readers are reading this, do not take this away from me. It's all I have.
Ironically, when you're reading a book in a language that isn't your native language, it can sometimes be confusing if the author doesn't italicize or contextualize a foreign word. It's something I've experienced occasionally when reading in other languages, and it's something that friends of mine whose native language is not English will complain about. There are millions of people around the world whose native language is not English who nonetheless read books written in English. The supposed dichotomy of white Anglophones who don't understand, say, a Mandarin word, and BIPOC non-native English speakers who will get it seems awfully reductive.
I am a biologist. There is only kind of person that can get pregnant- a woman.
On “women” definition, the word was created as a biological “technical” term for 50% of population that is born as female. The term has important use in computer programming for health insurance companies that mail notification of recommended breast-cancer screening for age group X. Likewise for men and prostate cancer screening. And other data use downstream depends on correct use of “women” as biological. If the activists desire a word as an umbrella category for [biological women + others], then they should create that new word instead of stealing and mis-using an existing word. I suggest “womin” as umbrella category and as it doesn’t contain “man” and “men”; that should make the activists happy. And by the way, only women can become pregnant. In 2022, the science of “transgender” surgical procedure does not enable pregnancy.
There’s so many ideas that popped up while listening to this episode, and how those who want sensitivity readers for fiction are the same types of people who require certain narratives to fit political agendas and will completely ignore those who don’t -- or will argue that the person in the identity category who doesn’t fit the agenda is somehow not as worthy as the others in that category who do.
What comes to mind are a couple instances of this -- a friend of mine who is a black state trooper in Maryland who faced crazy racism from his department, and when he filed a complaint, the department cooked up an internal investigation against HIM that left him suspended without pay for four years. The NAACP wouldn’t take his case because they said representing a black cop didn’t fit their agenda. I wrote an essay about his experience in 2019, and the state police dropped their case against him, gave him four years of back pay, and gave him his job back. (Just found out this week that the Dept of Justice is opening an investigation on MD state police because of department racism against black troopers, citing Matin’s case). But with the NAACP -- the idea was: “you can be black, or you can be a cop, but you can’t be both.”
And on another note -- in the “patient community” -- if a person doesn’t fit the narrative of “owning” their disease, and if they aren’t fighting the ableist “system” that seeks to oppress their identity of disease as a protected minority, then that person’s perspective not only doesn’t count -- but is considered offensive for not falling in line with the narrative, and if they overcome disease, then they can no longer relate to those currently suffering. The idea becomes more so how to protect the right to suffer rather than demand funding research to eliminate their suffering.
Anyway -- that was long winded, sorry! -- but it all comes back to sensitivity readers: this one person in this one identity must represent the perspective of everyone in that identity category, and if someone in that category disagrees with the sensitivity reader’s analysis, then they aren’t black enough or disabled enough or whatever else.
Bah hum bug.
That Isabella Wang tweet exemplifies a phenomenon I'm so fascinated by: authors whose online personas are that they are outwardly contemptuous of people who may want to read them and the readers and booksellers who absolutely love that and think good allyship means promoting said authors.
Foreign words: Much ado about nothing. One can easily Google or use a translation app to look up words not already identifiable by context.
Re, insensitivity, I remember reading Chang-Rae Lee's best-selling and critically acclaimed novel Aloft over a decade ago and found the author woefully ill-informed about Italian Americans (who are proud of their heritage and do not change their last names, particularly not on suburban Long Island, where they are well represented), and the landscaping business, which is extremely cut-throat, and represented as an inherited piece of cake.
More recently, I just finished Chantal V. Johnson's Post-Traumatic, where every single white woman character, excepting the shrink who ties it all up in a bow at the end, is an over-privileged idiot. I know such women, with inherited wealth and well-employed spouses, are common in the "helping" professions where the narrator worked. But these are the only kind of white women the narrator seemed to see in New York. An otherwise interesting book failed itself with easy, cheap shots at a straw horse target.
PS, when I lived in Brooklyn it was a majority BIPOC borough, as is Providence (70%) where I live now.
The conservative internet is all abuzz with this Berkeley professor testifying before Congress. Personally I think she demonstrates every worst impulse in the critique you gave in the pod today and recent writings and discussions. How hard is it to say, I acknowledge there are other situations but this is nearly exclusively a woman's issue and use woman or female accordingly. I'm personally ideologically opposed to her but it's such a self own.
Great episode!
O Brave New World, in which "m*ther" is offensive language...
I was reading a book earlier this year (99 Nights in Logar) that was kind of an interesting experience because though it was written in English it felt like it was not written with a western audience in mind (one plot point involves a child wedding that feels like a joyous occasion), and unless you read a lot of old stuff, that’s actually a pretty unusual experience. But then the second-to-last chapter was entirely in untranslated Pashto and I realized that it was very much written with a western audience in mind, just that the author feels contempt for the audience, and that is not an unusual experience at all.
I can’t think of many examples where untranslated passages enhanced rather than detracted from a book I was reading, and I’m someone who likes languages.
Meanwhile, one of my mother’s major pet peeves is when foreign words are italicized in a text. She feels like the publisher expects her to be too dumb to get things from context.