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The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house
This is a mini-review that I wrote for WWAC but will not post, at least not in its current form:
Maru Ayase’s short novel The Forest Brims Over is about a young woman named Rui who happens to be the wife of a famous writer. Fed up with the words her husband puts in her mouth in his fiction, Rui swallows a handful of seeds that sprout from her body, gradually turning her into a forest. Despite its fantastic premise, the story is firmly grounded in the psychological realism of the authors and editors who treat women as nothing more than literary symbols to be exploited for sales and awards. In the first four chapters, Rui’s transformation inspires significant shifts in the lives of the people in her husband’s literary circle. In the fifth and final chapter, we finally get to see Rui’s own perspective, and it’s brilliant.
As an academic who’s constantly asked to teach and review the work of male authors writing about “gender issues,” I felt like The Forest Brims Over was addressing me directly. I’m frustrated by the countless everyday examples I see of cisgender male writers being promoted (and paid) while the rest of us struggle against becoming marginalized in some sort of bizarrely gendered zero-sum literary game. The concept of a "gender war" feels simplistic and dated, but it’s difficult to see cisgender men being given opportunities by default while watching the door be closed - however gently - in the faces of talented non-male creators.
The irony of the translator of The Forest Brims Over being male is not lost on me, nor is the fact that this particular translator (whom I’m sure is a very nice person; I don’t know him) has built his career on a specialization in women's fiction. In fact, many high-profile translators of Japanese women’s fiction are male; I know this because I can name them. Meanwhile, I see extremely talented non-male translators on social media being relegated to work on manga and video games not because that’s what they want to do, but because that’s where "someone like them" (ie, someone who doesn’t deserve to be named) belongs. Women, inasmuch as they only exist as literary ciphers and symbols, cannot be translators; they can only be translated.
Of course there are high-profile female translators as well, and they’re doing amazing work. Still, despite the majority of Japanese-to-English translators being female, high-profile female literary translators are exceptions. Personally speaking, I can count off every single one of the dozens of gatekeepers who shot me down during the ten years I spent trying to become a literary translator of Japanese women’s fiction, and they’re all men. No exceptions.
So I sympathize with Rui, whose every word is stolen from her by the men who conspire to confine her to a page of pulped paper. If she can’t speak in the language of the cultural elite, she’ll find another way of expressing herself, and the vast and mysterious array of life she produces is infinitely more vibrant than her husband’s formulaic literary fiction. Her husband has the privilege of publishing award-winning books made of dead wood, but she is the roots and the leaves and the flowers and the wind.
...I wrote this last night, and then this morning I got an email telling me that my application to the Philadelphia writer’s workshop was waitlisted. This is frustrating, obviously, to have the door closed in my face again. But then again, there’s a lot of space outside the house, and a lot more room to grow.
Maru Ayase’s short novel The Forest Brims Over is about a young woman named Rui who happens to be the wife of a famous writer. Fed up with the words her husband puts in her mouth in his fiction, Rui swallows a handful of seeds that sprout from her body, gradually turning her into a forest. Despite its fantastic premise, the story is firmly grounded in the psychological realism of the authors and editors who treat women as nothing more than literary symbols to be exploited for sales and awards. In the first four chapters, Rui’s transformation inspires significant shifts in the lives of the people in her husband’s literary circle. In the fifth and final chapter, we finally get to see Rui’s own perspective, and it’s brilliant.
As an academic who’s constantly asked to teach and review the work of male authors writing about “gender issues,” I felt like The Forest Brims Over was addressing me directly. I’m frustrated by the countless everyday examples I see of cisgender male writers being promoted (and paid) while the rest of us struggle against becoming marginalized in some sort of bizarrely gendered zero-sum literary game. The concept of a "gender war" feels simplistic and dated, but it’s difficult to see cisgender men being given opportunities by default while watching the door be closed - however gently - in the faces of talented non-male creators.
The irony of the translator of The Forest Brims Over being male is not lost on me, nor is the fact that this particular translator (whom I’m sure is a very nice person; I don’t know him) has built his career on a specialization in women's fiction. In fact, many high-profile translators of Japanese women’s fiction are male; I know this because I can name them. Meanwhile, I see extremely talented non-male translators on social media being relegated to work on manga and video games not because that’s what they want to do, but because that’s where "someone like them" (ie, someone who doesn’t deserve to be named) belongs. Women, inasmuch as they only exist as literary ciphers and symbols, cannot be translators; they can only be translated.
Of course there are high-profile female translators as well, and they’re doing amazing work. Still, despite the majority of Japanese-to-English translators being female, high-profile female literary translators are exceptions. Personally speaking, I can count off every single one of the dozens of gatekeepers who shot me down during the ten years I spent trying to become a literary translator of Japanese women’s fiction, and they’re all men. No exceptions.
So I sympathize with Rui, whose every word is stolen from her by the men who conspire to confine her to a page of pulped paper. If she can’t speak in the language of the cultural elite, she’ll find another way of expressing herself, and the vast and mysterious array of life she produces is infinitely more vibrant than her husband’s formulaic literary fiction. Her husband has the privilege of publishing award-winning books made of dead wood, but she is the roots and the leaves and the flowers and the wind.
...I wrote this last night, and then this morning I got an email telling me that my application to the Philadelphia writer’s workshop was waitlisted. This is frustrating, obviously, to have the door closed in my face again. But then again, there’s a lot of space outside the house, and a lot more room to grow.