Link This |
Email this |
Blog This |
Comments (4)
Global Lit: Reading Outside the Borderlines
September 24, 2007
World literature is one of my passions; for four years, I wrote a column about it, and I hope it won't sound too high-horse for a Monday if I say we're ridiculously isolationist in our reading choices.
I know it isn't easy to choose books from other countries: first, there are more books being published than ever, so if you wanted, say, to read just mysteries by Virginia writers for the next couple of years, you probably could.
Second, even if rights buying and translation aren't enormous stumbling blocks, they're still stumbling blocks -- in a market flooded with product, it's just easier to take a chance on the new Virginian mystery writer than it is to take a chance on the new political novelist from far, far away.
Third, it's hard enough to learn about new books from your own country. We still haven't figured out how to bridge the gap between the hand-selling recommendations readers could once count on from established local booksellers and the current land of so many books, so little vetted information. Friends and acquaintances are constantly asking me "What should I read next? What's new?" We have so little time that we can't afford to waste it on lousy books.
So I feel for the writers in this article from The New York Times about Brazilian writers who focus on the Amazon. Milton Hatoum, for example, sounds fascinating to me -- he's a writer whose books examine the complicated relationship between Arab immigrants and the rain forest (and while he is of Lebanese descent, he considers himself not Lebanese-Brazilian, but Brazilian). I like what he says here:
"Mr. Hatoum, 55, said that when he started to write he faced the challenge of how to avoid the exoticism associated with the Amazon and the Levant, and that he still dreaded having that exotic label attached to him.
'I don’t know why a palm tree is considered exotic and snow is not, because to me snow is very exotic,'he said. 'And there is a reason why 80 percent of the people in the Amazon live in cities. I’m aware of the romantic idea of returning to nature, but the Amazon is not idyllic. Living in the forest is difficult, awful even.'"
Perhaps if we read more books about people who lived with palm trees, we'd stop seeing the trees and start seeing the forest: other places, other voices, other views. Why should our modern global worldview stop at our bookshelves?
Posted by Bethanne Patrick on September 24, 2007 | Comments (4)
