Ethnic Literature

Using minorities as characters in books might demands lots of documentation and research.

It depends of your audience - if it is familiar or not with different ethnic identities or if it is made by the members of the minority itself.

When it is about literary works, the most important dimension you have to find is authenticity. In this case, the careful details provided by the documentation are offering the information necessary to set up the credible characters. You don't have to give the reader a lesson of history, culture or even geography but to make your characters able to speak with their own original voice.

These are a couple of thoughts, giving me a couple of insights for a work-in-process about how to better communicate about minorities, following the meeting with Kemelman's Rabbi Small.

Read Central! Europe

Read Central! Europe is an informal association of four publishing houses from Central Europe: Magveto from Budapest, Hungary, Arhipelag from Belgrade, Serbia, Studentska zalozba from Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Fraktura from Zapresic, Croatia.

The common trait of all is the concern to publich literary works speaking to readers around the world and to offer a common basis of understanding in an area where disagreements were more often than the common perspectives.

The writer's heart, in exile

Being forced to reconsider your writing universe in a foreign language is a painful experience. In the former communist Central and Eastern Europe, the outcome is mostly a love-hate relationship with the mother country, an overcriticism against what it is perceived as cultural and economic underdevelopment and political immaturity. Or, they are dreaming about an utopian space, whose traditions were brutally destroyed by the foreign influence - specifically, the Soviet one.

Practically, the pain is the way in which you should reinvent yourself, your words, the new dictionary you should learn - culturally (because otherwise you cannot be took into consideration by any serious edition house) and from the point of view of the language in itself. You should reinvent your style, yourself. And even after the successful integration and the first edition published in the new language, the feeling of being a foreigner remains: in the interviews you are asked to express yourself as belonging to the other world and you are still considered a curiosity, not part of the Western canon.

If in the case of the case already mentioned - of the former communist countries writers - it is possible to find common references - obsessively considered as a proof that Central and Eastern Europe is part of Europe too, for the writers beloning to the Middle East, this link should be reinvented. And, the use of "big" regional categories - as Central and Eastern Europe, or the Middle East - cultural constructions we are using because of our laziness of thinking - is explanatory enough to proove our serious limits of understanding the other.

But our knowledge in itself is quite limited. And all we could do is to try, as much as possible, to improve little by little the confuse shapes of our knowledge, by reading and trying to find out more about other cultures and representatives of those cultures. And you need passion and a lot of perseverance, even you assume for the very beginning you will never be able to learn "all". An incentive and a possible reason to try to coexist with our own ignorance.

Rafik Shami's book - Damaskus im Herzen und Deutschland im Blick - is my first contact with Syria, viewed from a writer. Who was forced to left the country and reconsider himself as a writer. Who is now published in Germany and in other countries, but not in his home country. We are living in a globalized world, where the identities are shaped and reshaped several times during our life-time, according to the influences we are receiving from various environments we choose or we are compelled to chose. But we cannnot refuse ourself the question: who I am, which is the main narrative I am belonging to? A given political context - the dictatorship, in this case - should force a choice, you assume because no other opportunity for intellectual survival. But after this situation is gone - not yet the case in Syria - this choice is to be reconsidered and your identity rewritten. The red-line of the entire writings of a writer in exile: Who I am? Who I dare to be? For how long? How to go beyond the permanent status of a foreigner - in the home-country as in the chosed country?

And how to explain yourself? Using what kind of language? And the context in itself is not very helpful: the "mediators" - foreigners familiar with the language and culture of your home-country - are lacking, or are misleading. Your voice could be without any impact, because your difference don't fit the usual stereotype about your culture - mainly shaped by various political and geopolitical elements. Another added value to your loneliness.

The foreigners, with different cultures, backgrounds, level of education, are a part of the Western societies you cannot neglect. Sometimes it is difficult to understand. A very useful example - with some comic accents - in the book is related to the ways in which patients originary from the Middle Eastern countries are behaving in relation with the doctors and various medical requirements. A translator should be there to explain to both parts about the tabus and cultural limits and how to find a "healthy solution".

If it will be to find a word to resume to whole book, it is dialogue. It is not about strengthening the differences and to fight an enemy - not easy to find, just to have the disponibility. From the tradition of the coffee houses - put under political observance, since the very beginning, the 16th century - to the 1001 Nights, everything is about dialogue, discussion. When the weapons started to talk, it is only under the political influence. How to counterweight the political influence with the intellectual power it is still problematic and, at least for the moment, impossible.

The Case of the Missing Russian Crime Novel

An interesting feature published by Radio Free Europe.

On Ukrainian literature or about Ukraine in literature

Do we know something about Ukrainian literature? But were to find and how, in translations, of course? In fact, the question could be translated into: what we know about Belarusian, or Moldavian, or Bulgarian, or Croatian, or Slovak, or Estonian literature and a long long list is following. And, it is something interesting people from these countries have to tell us, what haven't been told since now or could not be told in German, or French, or English? Gifted people are everywhere, less lucky, that's their problem, not ours. And from now on we can start the recording about how important is to know the other, to build bridges between cultures and people through the universal language of culture. Which is true, but it is a small technical problem, mainly in literature? How to read it if they are not translated? So, it seems the translators should play a bigger role in the coming period, in any inter-cultural inter- or within country strategies, because they are the ones who mediate the communication. In addition, you need people with an enormous curiosity able to share and promote to the others quality writings, whatever the country of origins the writers are belonging to.

But, reaching this goal is still complicate and let's go back to what we already have. At the level of the daily, public perception, you associate most part of these countries with crime, prostitution, illegal immigration, in the Ukrainian case a plus is the daily discussion about gas supplies. So, no wonder if the shortest way to reach the hearts and minds of an audience, almost indifferent in general by addressing - at least in the title - exactly these rather penal aspects. And, even the content is interesting and not stereotypical at all, the risks are to strengthen these stereotypes.

Oksana Zabushko's "Field Work in Ukrainian Sex" was considered, according to a 2006 opinion poll in Ukraine, one of the most important of post-independence period. Is an account of post-totalitarian awakening traumatic experiences, at the end of a long period when bodies and souls of all the men and women were the considered the property of the state through an extended system of interdictions and social tabus.

It was possible to transgress it and in fact, all these rules were mostly designed for the subjects of the regime not for the ruling party leaders, but the last ones pretended, by their identification with the good power to share their part of the common property, including the individual citizens's lives and bodies. Abortion, for example, was illegal and punished with prison, but it doesn't mean these societies were living in the perfect purity. The access to condoms and proper medical service was possible without being considered a law infringement, but only if you was part of the establishment. But now, you have freedom and the independence and what to do with your body, how to offer yourself the repressed freedom? And then, you discover that you are not free, because the slave of various social and economic shortages. How you can get out of? Using your body as an exchange, a potlach.

It is not the exclusive way, of course. But it is another aspect: The communication through sex seems the easiest and not needing too much translation way to get in touch with the others - to be read Westerners. And, in this way, you discover that your body could speak various languages - from the one of hunger to the one of love. The more you are yourself on a higher step on the Maslow's stair, the more you need to share also part of your culture and identity. In this way, you scatter in your daily discourse lonely and documented references about the history and culture of your own country, nobody have the time to listen, understood and get further documentation about. Because, as we've mentioned at the beginning, the references are not usual. Your stamp is very simple: Easterner, if speaking a Slavic language, of course, Russian. Maybe your identity could get a higher profile or you simply consider yourself a victim and will never found on yourself in this strange and cold environment and will go back as soon as possible. There's no place like home. But your "home" could simply be an illusory and not corresponding to reality location.

Zabushko is also a poet and the book is including many verses, the old Ukrainian poetry tradition being obvious. And I asked myself, what kind of poetry you could have in post-communist/soviet countries? In many cases, during communism writing real poetry was forbidden, being replaced by the versification needed to offer a lyrical substance to various parties celebrations. After the "liberation" the sources of inspiration are to be found in the old folk or pre-modern authors, giving, at least the begining of this new chapter, a feeling of out-of-date.

We hear about Ukraine, again, as a direct title reference, in Marina Lewycka's "A Short history of Tractors in Ukrainian". Lewycka is Ukrainian by origin only, being born in a refugee camp in Kiel, in 1946. The Ukrainian character of his book is a young woman and his son, with the UK visa about to expire, "falling in love" with a widowed - with two daughters - , who's writing a book about tractors in Ukrainian. This character is corresponding to what we expect to read about a woman from this far East and the novel enjoyed a great success. It's a bitter humour, out of the television afternoon series.

If asked what's the book I like from the new Ukrainian literature, I would say without wavering: The Death and the Penguin of Andrei Kurkov, an absurd story centered of the life and death of Misha, the penguin rescued from Zoo. Because it's always healthy to keep in one of your pocket the dose of good, black humour. His case, as an Ukrainian writing in Russian, accused sometimes of not being a supporter of the Ukrainian literature, is revealing another important detail if it is to have a comprehesive view of the publishing landscape there. The financial flow infusing the local book market is extremely low. Russia is still a good market and they are many outspoken Russian writers who get the international recognition - as Viktor Erofeev, Yuri Mamleev, Irina Deneskhina or Victor Pelevin, to mention only a very few of them. In a way, it's quite difficult to accept for the pioneers of the new pioneers of a new national literature that this painful reference could not get out of sight.

Knowledge gap

One of the main problems affecting post-communist literary life in Central and Eastern Europe is the scarcity of financial resources. Before, the only value took into account in supporting the publication of a book was the conformity with the one-party ideology. After, the writers needed to face the "market opportunity" as well as the low state budget for the edition houses. The book become a business in itself, as the interest of the public - aparently high during communism for intellectual activities, but also because not any other sources of open information allowed - shifted towards a "softer" agenda, as set by the media or the daily problems, including the puzzled reality of the post-communist world.

For the writers belonging to the ethnic minorities, the gap between them and the writers of the "majorities" increased. Hungarians writers in Romania, for example, are writting in Hungarian, go to book-fairs in Hungary and are considered as part of the Hungarian literature. The possibility to reach the larger audience in Romania is almost impossible, mostly in the area where is no knowledge of Hungarian. The cost of the translations seem to high. The Romanian writers don't have direct access to the works of their colleagues and the interest in the literary, cultural reviews is quite low. All the inquiries made by now among Romanian and Hungarian writers are showing an important gap in the reciprocal knowledge. In fact, the Romanian public is most familiar with works of Esterházy, or Konrád György than of János Székely or Domokos Szilágyi, both of them well known in Hungary, but not yet translated into Romanian.