Translocalities / Translocalidades: Feminist Politics of Translation in the Latin/a Américas ed. by Sonia E. Alvarez et. al (review)

The recently published and compelling Translocalities / Translocalidades engages with the interstitial spaces of nationhood, gender, sexuality, and race across the Americas, themes that are also notably highlighted by Gloria Anzaldúa in her canonical Borderlands / La frontera. Translocalities reflects on a region rich with linguistic, political, social, and racial diversity, and the movement of a theoretical discourse among disparate groups of people. Employing translation as a central metaphor, the authors of Translocalities take a theoretical approach to answering questions posed in Anzaldúa’s work as they explore the role of translation, in its many forms, in the travel of feminist discourse through the Americas.

Resulting from a research group of cross-disciplinary, feminist scholars working across the Americas, the twenty essays that make up this volume seek to disrupt dominant power structures as they bring to light both the circulation of feminist discourses in the Americas as well as the inherent cultural differences across the continents that challenge such movement. The contributors of this volume, or the Translocas, as they call themselves, represent diverse academic disciplines that include sociology, cultural studies, education, and public health and employ a variety of theoretical approaches such as postcolonial theory, political activism, and translation theory. The compiled articles represent a political project and demonstrate an innovative theoretical approach to understanding the Americas in all its linguistic, cultural, social, and political complexity.

Translocalities is divided into four parts, beginning with Claudia de Lima Costa’s essay, “Lost (and Found?) in Translation: Feminisms in Hemispheric Dialogue.” Drawing on examples presented by her fellow authors in the book, such as the translation of Our Bodies, Ourselves (1971), Costa argues that translation, or constant mediation between hemispheres, is essential to the process of social transformation that feminism advocates. This introductory piece highlights one of the greatest strengths of this work: the authors not only lament what is lost in translation – a response that critics so often resort to – but they also highlight and celebrate the myriad ways that feminist discourse is able to travel across linguistic, cultural, and political borders.

Part I, “Mobilizations: Mobilizing Theories / Texts / Images,” represents the most traditional use of translation theory as the five essays examine the ways in which certain feminist texts, themes, or authors have been translated. Beginning with the largest-scope study, Norma Klahn’s chapter, “Locating Women’s Writing and Translation,” explores ways that women’s writing in Latin America has traveled to the United States. She highlights the dominance of Magical Realism and Testimony in this movement of texts to point towards the limited readership of Latin American feminist literature in the United States. However, she does not conclude her discussion by pointing out absences, but instead suggests that a more informed reading public created by the inclusion of better contextualization in translations would further encourage the movement of texts written in Latin America by women. Essays in this section also include Ana Rebeca Prada’s experience teaching Anzaldúa’s work in Bolivia, Isabel Espinal’s personal account of her translation of Yrene Santos’s El incansable juego (2002), or Marisa Belausteguigoitia Rius’s trialogue of Anzaldúa, Subcomandante Marcos, and Rosario Castellanos.

Moving from an examination of the translation of texts, Part II, “Mediations: National / Transnational Identities / Circuits,” takes up a discussion of the vehicles through which feminist discourses and practices circulate, in particular exploring journals, magazines, public health documents, and music. Claudia de Lima Costa discusses the Brazilian Revista Estudos Feministas while Márgara Millán looks at the Mexican journals Fem, Debate Feminista, and La Correa Feminista; both critics suggest that journals and magazines function as cultural mediators, and that, as such, they can also be spaces of disruption and political communication. Also in this section, Macarena Gómez-Barris looks not at publications but at music to show the ways that...