Tag Archives: French-based Creoles
Translating “The Mermaid of Black Conch,” an interview with Gerty Dambury
Through this brief overview of Dambury’s work, I wish to show how her work operates at the intersection of linguistic, cultural and historical worldscapes, powerfully manifesting the archipelagic francospheres this issue seeks to amplify. And unsurprisingly, my conversation with Gerty Dambury about her translation of British-Trinidadian author Monique Roffey’s novel The Mermaid of Black Conch (2020), published in French by Montréal-based publisher Mémoires d’encrier in 2023 as La Sirène de Black Conch, centered on the challenges of rendering distinctive forms of speech, navigating complex identities, and creating spaces for linguistic, cultural and literary cross-pollination.
A Review of “AfroTrans: Perspectives. Entretiens. Poésie. Fiction”
As the title indicates, this rich volume is entirely devoted to Afrodiasporic transgender experiences, but editor and contributor Michaëla Danjé specifies that it does not seek to construct a new, normative, monolithic, inalienable identity category. In fact, the Trans in AfroTrans is capacious and fluid enough to welcome transformation, transmigration, transoceanicity, and, germane to this special issue, translation. Conceived as an open space for trans artists, activists, and intellectuals from all corners of the African diaspora to constitute, bear witness to, and preserve their own archive, the volume organically stretches out like an archipelagic community with submarine ties connecting the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.