Banner of the Week: “Show us some Humanity!”

Quote of the Week: Yiyun Li

Once you’re Chinese, you’re always Chinese. They put a mark on you . . . And I don’t want to be owned. (Writer Yiyun Li, speaking in Mother Tongues at China Books Review)

Ethnic ChinaLit Quote of the Week: Diversity as Vulnerability

“In the world of rational thought, Genghis Khan is not a symbol of separatism,” said Christopher Atwood, professor of Mongolian and Chinese frontier and ethnic history at the University of Pennsylvania. “In the world of irrational paranoia, he might be.” (Cited in Xi’s Quest for Ethnic Unity Turns Genghis Khan Into New Danger)

Quote of the Week: On the Train to Lhasa

The carriage soundscape was a veritable clash of the dialects; the Hui women gossiping in guttural, Central Asian-tinged Mandarin, the Hongkongers hiking through the octaves as they debated the issues of the day in tonal Cantonese. (Excerpted from the just-published Harmony Express by Thomas Bird)

Desmond Tutu: Speaking Truth to Power

“Mr. Zuma, you and your government don’t represent me. You represent your own interests. I am warning you out of love, one day we will start praying for the defeat of the A.N.C. government. You are disgraceful.” (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speaking in 2011 during Jacob Zuma's period as President of South Africa, as quoted in … Continue reading Desmond Tutu: Speaking Truth to Power →

Quote of the Week: Querying the Maori Canon

Canons have real-world effects. When I first talked about teaching Māori literature in an English department in New Zealand, a number of people questioned whether there would be enough writing to justify a whole course, let alone a whole job. This assumption is not accidental – it grows out of a colonial view that Indigenous … Continue reading Quote of the Week: Querying the Maori Canon →

Altaic Storytelling Quote of the Week: Sinification of Our Country’s Islam

. . . the Chinese Islamic Association advocates the following: 1) That education about the Socialist Core Values must enter the mosque; 2) That the outstanding traditional culture of China [中华优秀传统文化] enter the mosque; 3) That the “Lessons on Muslim Patriotism” enter the mosque; 4) That religious rituals, culture, and architecture must embody Chinese characteristics, Chinese styles, … Continue reading Altaic Storytelling Quote of the Week: Sinification of Our Country’s Islam →

Altaic Storytelling Quote of the Week: Translation and the Looking Glass

It [translating] teaches the writer how to write in a way that nothing else can because you are inside of something. You’re not outside of it anymore. One can read something so closely that it’s only by translating it that you really do feel you’ve gone through the looking glass, that you are on the … Continue reading Altaic Storytelling Quote of the Week: Translation and the Looking Glass →

非漂 [Fēi Piāo] Quote of the Week: Patrice Nganang on African Writers’ Focus on Life Overseas

Ngum Ngafor: As an artist, you follow in the footsteps of writers like Bate Besong and Mongo Beti to critique political and social issues. How urgent is it for today’s Cameroonian creative to be society’s conscience? Patrice Nganang: It is more than urgent, particularly because Africa has had a very long disconnect between its younger writers … Continue reading 非漂 [Fēi Piāo] Quote of the Week: Patrice Nganang on African Writers’ Focus on Life Overseas →

Quote of the Week: To Gloss or Not, That is the Question

There’s a part of me that just deeply resents the fact that there’re many parts of the world where the fiction that comes from there is read as anthropology rather than as literature. And increasingly that kind of anthropological reading then means that . . . you’re explaining your world rather than inhabiting your world. … Continue reading Quote of the Week: To Gloss or Not, That is the Question →