{"id":420812,"date":"2019-05-14T18:30:34","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T22:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=420812"},"modified":"2019-05-15T06:40:21","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T10:40:21","slug":"dezafi-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2019\/05\/14\/dezafi-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Dezafi [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win<\/a> posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

P.T. Smith<\/strong> reads, writes, and lives in Vermont.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dezafi<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Frank\u00e9tienne, translated from the French by Asselin Charles (Haiti, University of Virginia)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every year, the BTBA introduces me to books I\u2019d otherwise completely miss. Whether it\u2019s because I read it while a judge, because it\u2019s on the longlist, or because I had the wildly fun advantage of watching them discuss these books and some lodged in my head, like Asselin Charle\u2019s translation of Frank\u00e9tienne\u2019s D\u00e9zafi<\/em>. It was one of a few books rooting to make the longlist despite not having read it. I\u2019ve read Frank\u00e9tienne before, apparently, though I remember nearly nothing of Ready to Burst. Ultravocal <\/em>has been forthcoming from Archipelago for what seems like years. He\u2019s the master of Haitian literature. This is a \u201czombie\u201d novel. How can you not root for that?<\/p>\n

My copy arrived after the longlist was announced and I dove in. I started it at the same time I was reading another book on the list. D\u00e9zafi<\/em> took over, and that\u2019s nothing against that unnamed book, but Frank\u00e9tienne just gives us that damn good of a book. And the reason it should win this year is because this is a book only the BTBA could recognize. The entire longlist is a demonstration of how special and full of variety this award is.<\/p>\n

\"\"Let\u2019s get the fun, and deceptive, pitch out of the way first. This novel has zombies! It\u2019s the second book on a BTBA longlist to have zombies! But this was also written in 1975. It\u2019s not zombies as we know them. It\u2019s not a literary novel playing with genre tropes to make high-minded people feel comfortable reading about monsters, spaceships, of fantasy kingdoms. The zombies are mostly called zonbis, and they\u2019re humans who have had their soul stolen by a sorcerer, a Vodou priest. These are Haitian zombies, a parable for poor, abused workers, not George Romero\u2019s zombies, and certainly nothing like modern and increasingly desperate attempts to add some new spin to zombies. Instead D\u00e9zafi <\/em>is straightforward in that Frank\u00e9tienne has no interest in saying something about the idea of zombies, but instead they are just the perfect and natural fit to the story he\u2019s telling. These zonbis were made, they exist, they suffer, and they will have their revenge. Despite this warning about D\u00e9zafi<\/em>, something remains true: the BTBA has no hesitation paying attention to genre. Last year\u2019s winner is packed full of sci-fi elements. This is a literary award that embraces genre as an element of literature alongside any style, trick, tool, device, whatever.<\/p>\n

What else is it that makes D\u00e9zafi<\/em> deserve to win the title this year? How about that it\u2019s simultaneously an immensely complex and challenging novel and an engaging read? It\u2019s got sections in italics, the voice of the zonbis: \u201cSleep rise look walk eat lick finger blow fall run spend the day hungry. Talk nonsense. Tongue heavy. Tongue shredded in a thousand pieces. Full belly. Twisted guts. Thirsty for water.\u201d The writing here can be fragmented, with partial lines, and spaced across the page, calling to mind poetry. It\u2019s the collective voice of a people crying out. They want to be heard. They want their souls back. They are also a voice of Haitian tradition, the crossroads, dance. These sections are the most romantic sections, beautiful and fun and strange. They give the zonbis empathy: \u201cOur skins are raw. We\u2019re wounded to our bones.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most accessible, straightforward, plot-based narrative is in normal font and tells the story of humans involved with the zonbis, including the sorcerer Sintil and his, uh, daughter\/servant\/inappropriate relationship, Siltana, and the assistant Zof\u00e8. Siltana will fall in love with one of the zonbis, feed him salt to \u201cpoison\u201d him by making him strong, leading to rebellion. The writing here is still beautiful and wild and unique, but it\u2019s also where we learn how zonbis are made, the past of the hero zonbi Klodonis, and where the love story between him and Siltana comes through.<\/p>\n

The final of the three main types of narrative is in bold text, with slashes to break up lines: \u201cAll roads cross in the woods \/ we rise up early \/ ass kissing flatterers go a long way \/ even with a single match you can light a fire \/a dandy at the cockfight \/ gamecocks fight \/ we break our backs working\u201d These are a bit of everything: the story; the zonbi\u2019s lives, the cockfighting celebration. They\u2019re a song of Haiti, the spine of this book.<\/p>\n

There are other types of text, and there are section breaks, and a diagram. It\u2019s complex is what I\u2019m saying. It\u2019s intricate in that way where as you read you feel that there are connections everywhere, that the book is overgrown with details and references and ties between sections and lines and ideas and characters and Haitian traditions and history. You feel <\/em>it. You make out what you can. You don\u2019t have to see the way the intricacies work to be rewarded with the pleasure they give off. The ride is a the point, and the whole way, you know that you could go deeper, work harder, read closer, reread.<\/p>\n

So: genre, joyous, welcoming, yet difficult literature. What else makes for a BTBA book? I\u2019m no Chad Post, so I haven\u2019t looked at any numbers, I have no charts, no actual data, but I\u2019m still going to claim that BTBA is one of the most diverse awards out there, each and every year. In terms of gender of the authors and translators, in terms of language, country of origin, time period, etc., I don\u2019t believe any award cooks up lists like these ones.<\/p>\n

\"\"Let\u2019s make another claim: a fairly diverse award list isn\u2019t that<\/em> hard to make. You\u2019re gonna want to start with the judges. Get some different tastes, different perspectives and backgrounds. Then you\u2019re gonna want to make the longlist long. <\/em>It helps. And this isn\u2019t just throwing a bone out to some books to pad out a list and make it diverse. Naw, not only are all the books on the longlist each year books some judges are passionate about, books that start as longshots that barely made the list often go on to make the short list\u2026and maybe win?<\/p>\n

Throughout the year, the judges comment on a spreadsheet where every eligible translation is listed. All books are assigned to a judge to read, workload neatly distributed. This means they are reading books they would never otherwise never come across, they\u2019re giving it a chance it might not otherwise get. These are the books they want to find. The books that would always get their attention will still get it, but the spreadsheet helps those other books.<\/p>\n

The judges want to find books like Dead Rose<\/em>, D\u00e9zafi<\/em>, Congo, Inc<\/em>., and Slave Old Man<\/em>. They read and they discuss with intentionality. I watched these discussions happen. There\u2019s a \u00addesire\u00ad<\/em> for a diverse list. That desire is there because it\u2019s how they read. They read with admirable openness, wanting new, wanting challenges. Diverse literature is a leap towards those things. The judges are seeking the best translated books on offer. What that means, they determine, with as many contributing factors as they want. With some judges, the intentionality towards diversity is greater than others. This is a good thing. No one is reading with an agenda, no one is forcing anything, but with honesty, passion, discussion, and varied intentions, a special award list rises.<\/p>\n

D\u00e9zafi <\/em>is representative of what the BTBA can accomplish. Of the type of book it can help readers uncover. It\u2019s the first novel written in Krey\u00f2l. It\u2019s brilliant, both structurally and as a story. The translation is wonderful (there are a few occasions where Charles adds a footnote, explaining a meaning and most of the time it\u2019s not necessary because he nailed the translation already). It\u2019s culturally important, both to Haiti and to anyone interested in world literature. Pulling a quote the afterword from Frank\u00e9tienne himself, \u201cD\u00e9zafi<\/em> was first of all for me an aesthetic literary experience at the level of the Creole language. D\u00e9zafi<\/em> is first and foremost the novel of the Haitian language, but as a language is indissolubly linked to the becoming, to the destiny, the lived situation of a people.\u201d He created a work of art in the language of the people, as an aesthetic and a political act. Charles has given that book to us in English. It deserves victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards.\u00a0 P.T. Smith reads, writes, and lives in Vermont. Dezafi\u00a0by Frank\u00e9tienne, translated from the French by Asselin Charles (Haiti, University of Virginia) Every year, the BTBA introduces me to books I\u2019d otherwise completely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":420822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[69092,69082,58296,52096,37876],"class_list":["post-420812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-asselin-charles","tag-dezafi","tag-franketienne","tag-p-t-smith","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":420862,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420812\/revisions\/420862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}