18 October 2021

Dear Everyone:

How are you doing? We’ve about hit the mid-point of the semester, and I’m wondering if you’re wondering how it will be possible to get everything that needs doing done, which is the strong sense that overtakes me at just about this point in every term. I once attended a yoga workshop led by a person who encouraged us to repeat, in the face of too much to do and not enough time, “I’ve got time.” It was their way of noting and reminding us that worrying about not having time wouldn’t make for less work. Though I grasped then and can now maybe appreciate some of the sense they were trying to convey, I remember being supremely annoyed by the suggestion — and I still find it vaguely irritating advice: As if saying it would make it true, as if “work” wasn’t a reference to all kinds of relationalities — those embedded in teaching and letters of recommendation and family and reviews and essays due and friends and laundry and grocery and everything else, as if plenitude were a speech act rather than materially conditioned. My mode of navigating impossible time demands is these days simply to focus on the thing immediately in front of me and, however imperfectly, pushing forward (sometimes sideways, hopefully rarely backwards). This is by way of both offering what encouragement I can to those facing and feeling similar impossibilities these days (or ever), and to apologize for my belatedness in getting to things that need doing for you and us — I am eager for conditions to shift to allow for rather more efficient address and movement.

Amid all the time demands, a lovely gaggle of people shows up for Friday’s US Latinx search seminar — many thanks to you for creating time, and particular appreciation to Flora de Tournay for super engaging comments as respondent. As ever, thanks also to Nancy Silverman for coordinating the seminar series.

This Friday, a sure-to-be fabulous event beautifully aligned with the US Latinx search! It is our great pleasure to be a co-sponsor of PLAYING IT BY EAR: Translating Literary Non–fiction with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio and Adrian Izquierdo in virtual discussion. Quoting from the advertisement, “Join Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of The Undocumented Americans (2020), for a discussion on translating literary non-fiction with Adrian Izquierdo (Baruch College, CUNY). Literary translation is a political issue as well as a creative art with a rich history that demands a representational code of ethics as well as an artistic talent. Issues of voice, diction, register, local usage, and tone have a huge impact in the translation of fiction & non-fiction. Translation of works from Spanish into English include various registers of English as well as different vernaculars of Spanish including Latin American Spanish and Latinx Spanish. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio will be in conversation with Adrian Izquierdo, discussing key texts in Spanish-English Latinx translation and how Latin American translation works paved the way.” My thanks to Mary McGlynn for arranging this cosponsorship, to Lily Iserson for terrific admin support, and please see registration information on the attached.

Wishing you an abundance of time and wellness!

Kandice