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Guillermo Calderón
Translated by Andrea Thome
Theater Communication Group - January 2016
[from the publisher]
Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is pleased to announce the publication of Guillermo Calderón’s Neva, translated by Andrea Thome.
This politically charged, haunting and humorous play tells the story of three actors, including Anton Chekhov's widow, who gather to rehearse scenes from The Cherry Orchard as Russia faces an impending revolution. A savage examination of the relationship between theatre and historical context, Neva received its English-language premiere at The Public Theater in New York in the spring of 2013 under the direction of Calderón himself.
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| Guillermo Calderón |
Andrea Thome’s plays have been produced throughout the U.S. She has also translated Rodrigo Garcia’s You Should Have Stayed Home, Morons (commissioned by Center Theatre Group for Radar LA).
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Review by Manuel Ramos
Reading a play, as opposed to actually watching a play performance, can be a tricky, misleading experience. First, the obvious: the sets, props, lighting, and audience reactions are missing. The reader is responsible for filling in huge gaps normally provided by actors and the stage itself. The not-so-obvious: that responsibility can devolve into a tedious chore if the reader is not up to the task, or the drama fails to stimulate the reader's interaction. The dynamism of the stage is lost when only the stark pages of the script share the void of the reader's solitude.
Given all that, I have to say that my initial reading of Neva started slow. I questioned the relevance of the three characters (one is Olga Knipper, Anton Chekhov's widow, the other two are actors in the same play as Olga.) They are self-absorbed entertainers anguishing over their art and personal losses while Russia simmers outside the theater, on the verge of revolution. But, thankfully, my ennui ended as I gradually immersed myself in the interplay of the characters, and I let myself flow with the emotional push and pull of Calderon's writing skill.
Olga continues to mourn her husband's death -- it's only been six months. She rehearses a play for the St. Petersburg stage, far from the familiarity and comfort of her Moscow Art Theatre. She is afraid, insecure, and wary of her fellow actors. Against this background, Calderón presents a short but vivid slice-of-life that encompasses the fleeting nature of existence, the dread of facing up to one's mortality, and the pervasiveness of sensuous artificiality. The actors play out scenes from Chekhov's tragic death in gut-wrenching attempts to ease the widow's burden, but ultimately realize they cannot understand the meaning of what they try to portray. There's a bit of class politics, gossipy sex tales, and reflections on the role, if any, of the cultural icon in real-world affairs. All in one act.
This bilingual edition of Neva turned out to be a rewarding reading experience that made me regret I've not seen the play on the stage, and has even inspired me to look closer at my long-neglected script-in-progress. I can't ask for more than that.
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Todos Somos Whitman/We Are All WhitmanLuis Alberto Ambroggio
Translated by Brett Alan Sanders
Arte Público Press - April 30, 2016
[from the publisher]
“Whitman, we are your epitaph, I and everyone / or better yet, you live in us since you told us / that each atom of your body was also ours, / just as we, like you, are the summer’s and all the seasons’ grass,” Luis Alberto Ambroggio writes in this poetic homage to the great American poet.
Ambroggio was inspired to respond to Whitman’s work after translating a series of essays about Song of Myself. This collection of 53 poems in English and Spanish is the result. Sometimes he includes a line from the master in his own piece, other times an epigraph introduces the verse. Either way, Whitman’s influence is notable. Many of Ambroggio’s poems—like Whitman’s—deal with physical pleasure: “To stretch myself out on your body. / Outspread myself from head to toes / from earth to sky / from my body to yours, and to other bodies / with libidinous prongs that pierce the horizon / and turn loose seas of bright juice.”
A native of Argentina, the poet views Whitman’s work through his Latin American lens, noting that Whitman’s “multitudes” include those who will not be denied, ignored or declared undocumented.
Other poems consider nature and death. “We are walking in autumn / among the red lips of maples / the smiles and yellow tears / of trees trembling with joy and sadness,” he writes. “We walk between the twin doors / of summer and winter / of death and life.”
Focusing on themes of identity, love and life, this collection will inspire readers to understand the universality in us all. Ultimately, we will all go to where we came from, “air, shadow, sun, dust.” Originally published in Spanish by Vaso Roto Ediciones, this edition includes the original Spanish text and a luminous English translation by Brett Alan Sanders.
Luis Alberto Ambroggio is the author of seventeen poetry collections. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Red Hot Salsa (Henry Holt and Co., 2005) and Cool Salsa (Henry Holt and Co., 1994). He lives in the Washington, D.C. area.
Brett Alan Sanders is the translator of Passionate Nomads (Aliform Publishing, 2010) and Awaiting the Green Morning (Host Publications, 2008), both by María Rosa Lojo. He lives and works in Tell City, Indiana.
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Bloodline
Joe Jiménez
Arte Público Press - May 31, 2016
[from the publisher]
In his junior year, seventeen-year-old Abraham learns how to drive a stick shift. He falls in love for the first time. And he has been in three fights and suspended twice, all before Thanksgiving. His grandmother and her girlfriend, the ones who have raised him, fear for his life and the hard future that awaits him. “He needs a father,” his grandmother says. “He needs a man. I can’t do this, Becky. We can’t. Not on our own.”
Soon, his Uncle Claudio—the son with a fat police file who has hurt his mother so many times—is back in the house. Determined to make a man of his nephew, he takes the boy to the gym and shows him how to use free weights and become bigger and stronger. Meanwhile, Abraham’s feelings for his friend Ophelia grow, and she tries to understand why he fights. “This will end badly,” she warns. “Nothing good can come from this.”
At school, Abraham learns about genetics, and he wonders if people are born bad. Is it in their DNA? Was he born to punch and kick and scream and fight and destroy things because of the genes in his body? Is that what happened to his father? All he knows is that his father is dead and his mother is gone. In Joe Jiménez’s striking debut novel for teens, a young man struggles with his family’s refusal to talk about the violence that has plagued it and what it means to become a man. Does a boy need a father to become a good man?
Joe Jiménez, a high school teacher in San Antonio, Texas, is the author of The Possibilities of Mud (Kóorima Press, 2014) and a chapbook, Silver Homeboy Flicka Illuminates the San Juan Courts at Dawn (Gertrude Press, 2012).
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Evelio Rosero
Translated by Anne McLean and Anna Milsom
Quercos - December, 2015
[from the publisher]
Winner
of the English
Pen Award (2015)
Winner of
Columbia’s Best Novel Award (2014)
A beguiling, surreal and controversial novel by Colombia's greatest writer since Gabriel García Márquez, Feast of the Innocents is a heartbreaking, literary tale of a Colombian doctor whose attempts to win back his family's love take a disastrous turn at the intersection of personal obsession and the nationalist myths of Colombia.
Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López should be a happy man – he has a family, a thriving medical practice, and adoring patients – but he lives a troubled life. He is married to a beautiful woman, but she despises him, and thanks to her influence he is unable to win favor with his two daughters.
In his growing despair, López becomes obsessed with exposing the myth of national hero Simón Bolívar – El Libertador, "The Liberator” – for what it truly is: a lie covering up years of massacres, betrayals, and sex scandals. But in interviewing elder locals about their memories of Bolívar he discovers that in Pasto, Colombia, the myth of Bolívar holds a tight grip on the identity of the city.
To put an end to the cult of El Libertador, López devises an elaborate stunt involving a carnival float on the day of The Black and White Carnival, celebrating the Feast of the Holy Innocents. A day for pranks, jokes and soakings...water bombs, poisoned empanaditas, ground glass in the hog roast – anything goes. But in Colombia, you question the founding fables at your own peril. At the frenzied peak of the festivities, drunk on a river of arguardiente, Doctor Justo will discover that this year the joke might just be on him.
From one of Colombia's foremost literary talents, Feast of the Innocents is both heartbreaking and triumphant, a literary portrait of obsession, alienation, and cultural identity in 1960s Colombia.
Evelio Rosero is a novelist and playwright whose work has been recognized by Colombia's National Literature Award and translated into more than a dozen languages. He is the author of sixteen novels, among which The Armies won the 2006 Tusquets International Novel Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2009. Rosero lives in Bogotá, Colombia.
Translator Anne McLean has twice won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, for Cercas' Soldiers of Salamis and Evelio Rosero's The Armies. Co-translator Anna Milsom is Senior Lecturer in Translation at London Metropolitan University.
Later.
Manuel Ramos is the author of several novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction books and articles. His collection of short stories, The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories, is a finalist for the 2016 Colorado Book Award. A new crime fiction novel is scheduled for publication by Arte Público Press in September, 2016.
“Whitman,
we are your epitaph, I and everyone / or better yet, you live in us
since you told us / that each atom of your body was also ours, / just as
we, like you, are the summer’s and all the seasons’ grass,” Luis
Alberto Ambroggio writes in this poetic homage to the great American
poet.
Ambroggio was inspired to respond to Whitman’s work after translating a series of essays about Song of Myself. This collection of 53 poems in English and Spanish is the result. Sometimes he includes a line from the master in his own piece, other times an epigraph introduces the verse. Either way, Whitman’s influence is notable. Many of Ambroggio’s poems—like Whitman’s—deal with physical pleasure: “To stretch myself out on your body. / Outspread myself from head to toes / from earth to sky / from my body to yours, and to other bodies / with libidinous prongs that pierce the horizon / and turn loose seas of bright juice.”
A native of Argentina, the poet views Whitman’s work through his Latin American lens, noting that Whitman’s “multitudes” include those who will not be denied, ignored or declared undocumented.
Other poems consider nature and death. “We are walking in autumn / among the red lips of maples / the smiles and yellow tears / of trees trembling with joy and sadness,” he writes. “We walk between the twin doors / of summer and winter / of death and life.”
Focusing on themes of identity, love and life, this collection will inspire readers to understand the universality in us all. Ultimately, we will all go to where we came from, “air, shadow, sun, dust.” Originally published in Spanish by Vaso Roto Ediciones, this edition includes the original Spanish text and a luminous English translation by Brett Alan Sanders.
- See more at: https://artepublicopress.com/product/todos-somos-whitman-we-are-all-whitman/#sthash.VzvZE9DF.dpuf
Ambroggio was inspired to respond to Whitman’s work after translating a series of essays about Song of Myself. This collection of 53 poems in English and Spanish is the result. Sometimes he includes a line from the master in his own piece, other times an epigraph introduces the verse. Either way, Whitman’s influence is notable. Many of Ambroggio’s poems—like Whitman’s—deal with physical pleasure: “To stretch myself out on your body. / Outspread myself from head to toes / from earth to sky / from my body to yours, and to other bodies / with libidinous prongs that pierce the horizon / and turn loose seas of bright juice.”
A native of Argentina, the poet views Whitman’s work through his Latin American lens, noting that Whitman’s “multitudes” include those who will not be denied, ignored or declared undocumented.
Other poems consider nature and death. “We are walking in autumn / among the red lips of maples / the smiles and yellow tears / of trees trembling with joy and sadness,” he writes. “We walk between the twin doors / of summer and winter / of death and life.”
Focusing on themes of identity, love and life, this collection will inspire readers to understand the universality in us all. Ultimately, we will all go to where we came from, “air, shadow, sun, dust.” Originally published in Spanish by Vaso Roto Ediciones, this edition includes the original Spanish text and a luminous English translation by Brett Alan Sanders.
- See more at: https://artepublicopress.com/product/todos-somos-whitman-we-are-all-whitman/#sthash.VzvZE9DF.dpuf
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