What I learned from reading books by women from every country in the world
Three years ago, when I set out to read writing by a woman from every country in the world, I had no idea of the ways in which this journey would surprise me, challenge me and, as life became smaller, sustain me.
What I did know was that I needed to broaden my bookcase far beyond the canon. So in June 2018, I started a blog where I would chart my way, gather tips from readers and review all 199 books, poems and stories. (I was more inclusive than some official lists – bringing in Palestine, Tibet and Kosovo, for instance). It felt surreal in December last year when I closed Le Déserteur by Hélène Kaziende from Niger, the very last country on my list. Taking the form of a letter to Africa, this short story explores the fraught decision to leave a place of origin. I had learned of Kaziende’s work through my research into Nigerien literature, and it took months for me to track down a secondhand copy of the 1992 collection, Kilomètre 30, where her story is printed. The pandemic meant it took another six weeks to land on my doorstep, and an additional afternoon to freshen up my French, before I could read it. It was well worth the wait.
There were many different routes to each of the 199 writers. My choices were led by the incredible array of recommendations sent by visitors to my blog from all over the world. For some authors, like Kaziende, it was a long and winding process to find their books. For many European writers, it was as simple as spotting an intriguing paperback in a bookshop. For certain countries, poetry was more readily available than prose. Among these was Turkmenistan: after researching, I came across Soviet-era poet Annasoltan Kekilova’s heartrending I Have Come Through Torments Within These Walls (translated by James Womack). This was one of the poems smuggled out of the Turkmen psychiatric hospital where Kekilova was detained for a decade because of her activism, and where she died in 1983.
I’m sometimes asked what struck me most over these years. Without doubt, it’s the sheer resilience of women in all corners of the world. This project really brought home the fact that so many issues women face are universal. It’s predictable and appalling that violence against women was such a recurring theme. In just one weekend, I was disturbed by an act of domestic abuse in A Disobedient Girl by Sri Lankan writer Ru Freeman, then an assault on a trans woman in Small Beauty by Canadian writer jia qing wilson-yang. The context changes, the misogyny remains.
On a lighter note, I hugely enjoyed revisiting children’s literature for the first time since childhood. So many writers navigated thorny issues beautifully. My favourites included Central African Republic writer Adrienne Yabouza’s The Magic Doll (illustrated by Élodie Nouhen and translated by Paul Kelly), which gently reflects on a mother’s struggle with fertility. I also learned a lot from Fijian writer Shazia Usman’s Kaluti and her empowering message of self-love for girls who are called “kaluti” – a derogatory term for dark-skinned people. And then there was Kiribati writer Marita Davies’s unforgettable Teaote and the Wall, helping young readers understand how the island nation is tackling climate change through solidarity.
And without solidarity during my own journey, I could never have hoped to discover Andorran writer Teresa Colom’s unpublished story, The Gravedigger’s Son, translated by Mara Faye Lethem, sourced for me by the National Library of Andorra, or South Sudanese writer Stella Gitano’s elusive short story collection Withered Flowers,
translated by Anthony Calderbank, which ArabLit Quarterly so generously posted to me from London to Melbourne. I’ve come to know an extraordinary global network of readers, writers, translators, publishers, librarians, booksellers and editors dedicated to championing books by women in translation. And what’s more, the power of collectives was found everywhere within the literature, too. One stunning example was Songspirals, a deep collaboration between five Yolngu women and three non-Indigenous Australian women over a decade. Solidarity takes many shapes.
If you are looking for more recommendations for short reads, I’d say you can do no better than Mauritian writer Ananda Devi’s novella Eve Out of Her Ruins (translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman), or Equatorial Guinean writer Trifonia Melibea Obono’s novella La Bastarda (translated by Lawrence Schimel) – two stories of individuals fighting oppression. Or if you’re partial to historical fiction, I’d suggest Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, reimagining the lives of the Mirabal sisters, who were symbols of hope and defiance during the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
So, where next for me? I’m keen to explore more literature from South America; Argentina was one of a few countries where I couldn’t limit myself to a single writer, largely thanks to Charco Press’s luminous catalogue. It speaks volumes about the quality of the literature I was reading that I never once diverged or paused along the way – it was too absorbing.