This special issue of Absinthe witnesses a living, Catalan language through the emotional labor of translation. It is also a testament to the thriving worlds of women’s writing in Catalan, with time-travelling fiction by Bel Olid (tr. Bethan Cunningham), regrets on pregnancy sublimated into an airborne taxi ride in a story by Tina Vallès (tr. Jennifer Arnold), Mireia Vidal-Conte’s poetry reflecting on Virginia Woolf’s suicide (tr. María Cristina Hall), a story of revenge on an abusive elderly woman by Anna Maria Villalonga (tr. Natasha Tanna), as well as reflections on war, bookstores, and generational conflict in post-Franco Spain. These often surreal pieces of Catalan fiction are informed by several essays and works of literary memoir, including those by Marta Rojals (tr. Alicia Meier) on the state of the Catalan language and Najat El Hachmi (tr. Julia Sanches) on the conditions of growing up in Catalonia as the daughter of Moroccan parents. These latter pieces resist and explore the contours of multilingualism, highlighting the intra- and interlingual reality of spoken Catalan alongside Spanish and Amazigh. Barings // Bearings invokes the feeling of a people through the work of a new generation of translators.
Najat El Hachmi & Julia Sanches
Anna Pantinat & Gabriella Martin
Esperança Camps & Katherine Reynolds
Mireia Calafell & Adrian Nathan West
Lolita Bosch & Nathan Douglas
Mònica Batet & Harriet Cook
Maria Pilar Senpau Jove & Kate Good
Alba Dedeu & María Cristina Hall
Laia Martinez i Lopez & Scott Shanahan
M. Mercè Cuartiella & Cortney Hamilton
Tina Vallès & Jennifer Arnold
Mireia Vidal-Conte & María Cristina Hall
Anna Maria Villalonga & Natasha Tanna
Llucia Ramis & Megan Berkobien
Marta Rojals & Alicia Meier
Bel Olid & Bethan Cunningham
