Tag: Peru

It’s so hard to be a stranger: A Blind Salmon by Julia Wong Kcomt

i looked into his low eyes
black, tired
i looked into his heart
and that splotch of vigor
made me
ephemeral, tardy, rancid, and fleeting

we arrive at the altar
in a state of absorption
i request a living offering
start to cough, phlegmy
till i’ve nearly smashed to pieces
at his feet

– from “opium weddings”

The poetry of Julia Wong Kcomt turns on the unexpected, crosses cultures, languages and borders, reflecting who she is, where she comes from and where she has travelled to and lived. Born into a Chinese-Peruvian (tusán) family in the desert city of Chépen, Peru, in 1965, she was a prolific writer whose work included eighteen books of poetry, along with a number books of fiction and hybrid prose. Questions of identity and belonging are central to her writing, as are themes of migration, motherhood, and the body.

A Blind Salmon, her sixth collection, originally published in 2008, is her first full-length work to be published in English translation. Translator Jennifer Shyue who has a particular interest in Asian-Peruvian writers, has been engaged with her and her poetry for several years making this volume a welcome introduction to an intriguing and important poetic voice. Sadly, however,  Kcomt did not live to see its release; she died in March of this year at the age of 59.

Composed while she was living in Buenos Aries, the poems in this dual-language collection, often involve a shift between languages—Kcomt was multilingual, speaking Spanish, English, German, and Portuguese—creating a challenge of sorts for Shyue, especially when the original contains English. This is handled with the use of an alternate sans serif typeface when appropriate, or by bringing Spanish into her English translation for the words or lines in English in the original, as in the poem “tijuana big margarita.” When German arises, it is left as is. This shifting linguistic terrain, like the sands of the region she comes from, adds texture and variation when they appear.

The poem “on sameness” which is repeated or echoed in the collection, is another wonderful example of the multilingual dynamic at play. The first appearance features Kcomt’s own English version of her poem “sobre la igualdad,” presented in two different typefaces on facing pages (the regular typeface and that which is used to denote English in the original). The wording is, naturally, identical. It opens:

in the circle, sweet circle
of intense immortality

where is my china?
the land with no owners
the face is not repeating itself

Later, when the poem is revisited, Kcomt’s Spanish original faces Shyue’s translation, which she made before reading the poet’s own translation (or at least refreshing her memory of a more distant encounter). The similarities and differences shine a light on the perspective a translator brings to her reading of another’s work—line by line and as a whole:

in the circle, sweet circle
of intense immortality

where my faraway chinese country stayed
the great country of all
where no faces repeat

This collection contains a mix of verse and narrative prose poems, the latter sometimes stretching on for three or more pages and offering a broader canvas for the exploration of identity and belonging, in some instances twice removed when set in Germany where Kcomt studied for a time. They address trying to find a home of some sort, balancing relationships, and finding invisible lines can be crossed in an instant as in “aunt emma doesn’t want to die” where the Asian-Latin American speaker, a foreign student, offends her elderly employer with her attraction to a man in a photo (“no looking, margarita. he’s not for you.”) and is forced to leave her home:

when i was moving out, you wouldn’t look at me. at  the geographic latitudes i’m from, we’re unfamiliar with that feeling, is it called ethnic guilt? perpetuation of folklore.

reiner was the forbidden fruit next to that tiger from kenya and you hated me because I took a bite that full-moon night as the children danced in costumes in the square.

[. . .]

and though i thought reiner would come looking for me or call me, that didn’t happen. not that it would have been necessary. his torso had imprinted on my groin. sometimes skin serves as a sort of reproduction.

in student housing i was once again surrounded by people like me. foreigners. it’s so hard to be stranger, to come from elsewhere, to fight, to steal, to do anything to get inside and the insiders throw you bait only to take it away.

The poems in A Blind Salmon seem to become increasingly charged with life and energy each time they are revisited. Kcomt’s speakers are bold and unapologetic, reaching out with language that is sensual, unexpected, unsettling. Her images are often startlingly corporeal, yet always touching the tender complexities of being in the world, a world that does not always no how to understand you, or you it, but one that is fully alive.

A Blind Salmon by Julia Wong Kcomt is translated from the Spanish by Jennifer Shyue and published by Deep Vellum/Phoneme Media.

“I have ghosts inside my head”: The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu by Augusto Higa Oshiro

The feverish paragraph that extends across the first six pages of Augusto Higa Oshiro’s The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu opens rather innocuously, with the titular character walking through the Parque de la Exposición in Lima, Peru on a pleasant afternoon. Suddenly the restrained and mild-mannered professor experiences a terrifying break with reality:

In the eternity of the instant, in a manner of speaking, the green of the afternoon flickered out, the park’s babbling was erased, as if the world had taken flight, the pebbled paths disappeared, no serene gardens, or laughing families, or murmuring young couples, or ponds full of fish: the only thing in the air now was the sakura tree, its branches and its luminous flowers. And in that fragment of afternoon, from that imperturbable beauty, Nakamatsu noticed, sprang a death drive, a vicious feeling, like the sakura were transmitting extinction, a shattering destruction.

The ominous atmosphere that descends on him triggers a panic attack that sends him raving through the streets of the city. Or perhaps he’s dreaming, it doesn’t matter, for his nightmare is only just beginning.

Not long after this first premonition of death, Nakamatsu finds that he has been forced to retire from his position at the university due to his age. He is fifty-eight. This leaves him with empty hours to fill as his anxieties and paranoia continue to grow. He returns to working on a novel based on the life of a friend of his father’s, Etsuko Untén, traces an endless network of named streets and alleys, and visits the cemetery where he pauses at the graves of his mother, father and his long dead wife. Self-exiled from his siblings and fellow members of the Japanese-Peruvian community, he seems to be engaged in a battle with his own Asian identity. Throughout his long days, he continually seeks to clear his mind of thoughts, exercise discipline over his imagination. When he doesn’t wish to go out, or watch TV, he crochets squares for a blanket that will never be finished, losing himself in the rhythms of the task. But hallucinations find him all the same.

They arrive as the sounds of birdsong and nature emanating from his bedroom. When he goes to investigate he finds himself surrounded by a chorus of song and babbling water so impossibly realistic that he is momentarily swept away:

It might have been a brief second, five minutes perhaps; in reality Nakamatsu, surprised, withdrawn into himself, couldn’t pinpoint exactly how long the happening lasted, the miracle occurred again and again over the next two weeks, intermittently, whether in the morning, in the afternoon, or at any hour of the night, and every time he was left astonished by that sensation of unusual beauty.

But astonishment eventually turns into uncertainty, and Nakamatsu begins to doubt his sanity. Soon he is back out seeking escape on the streets. At night he is troubled by horrific dreams, and as they intensify he grows increasingly despondent. And estranged. He purchases a felt hat, long coat and walking cane, affecting the 1940s style of both his father’s friend Utsén and his favourite poet, Martín Adán who had waged his own battles with alcohol and madness. Under this new guise, Nakamatsu’s wanderings become nocturnal and more torturous. He takes to hanging out in the dark corners of the city where prostitutes, addicts and homosexuals gather, always watching from the sidelines, engulfed by his own darkness, ever struggling to find a point of stillness.

This hypnotic novella moves with a steady, tumbling pace, intensifying as it traces the protagonist’s descent into madness. There is, at first, an odd uncertainty to the narrative, a speculative quality, that is explained when the narrator is revealed as a colleague of Nakamatsu’s who has taken upon himself to prepare this report. Because he is not exactly a friend, his account carries a slight tone of cynicism that only serves to heighten the crumbling state, mentally and physically, of a man who has long cut himself off from a natural support system, pursued and driven mad by the strangled ghosts of his father’s generation—the Japanese labourers who found themselves stranded in a distant hostile land where many managed to build lives and futures, but some never managed to adapt.

Born and raised in the working class centre of Lima in 1946, Higa Oshiro was the son of immigrants from Okinawa. His early writing was inspired by the neighbourhood in which he grew up, but after spending a year and a half doing factory work in Japan, he began to explore the experiences of the Japanese-Peruvian community, aliens in their New World home yet alienated from their ancestral land. The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu, originally published in 2008, belongs to this latter period of his career and represents his first publication in English translation. Sadly, Higa Oshiro died on April 28, 2023, just two month shy of its May 30th release. Translator Jennifer Shyue’s Afterword describes her 2019 meeting with the author and his warm support and generosity so hopefully we can look forward to further translations of his work.

The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu by Augusto Higa Oshiro is translated from the Spanish by Jennifer Shyue and published by Archipelago Books.

Civil war up close: Blood of the Dawn by Claudia Salazar Jiménez

“Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment.”
.                                                                  MARX

 So begins Blood of the Dawn, the devastating debut novel by Peruvian author Claudia Salazar Jiménez. This slender volume that captures, at gut level, the horror of the “Time of Fear”, the years when the Shining Path insurgency was at its most intense is tightly bound to the intimate feminine experience. It is an exercise with little narrative distance—one that takes three women from very different backgrounds, closes in on their unique perspectives, backgrounds, and motivations, and weaves back and forth between their stories. When their disparate trajectories intersect, their individual fates, at least in that time and place, become shockingly similar.

In 1980, a  fringe group of Maoist terrorists stole ballot boxes and burned them in the public square of the town of Chuschi, setting off a time of fear and violence that would, over the next twenty years, leave 70,000 dead. Set primarily during the first decade of this “People’s War,” Salazar Jiménez’s novel is a bold attempt to give voice to those not often heard. On both sides of the conflict.

There is Marcela, a disillusioned, yet idealistic teacher who is seduced by the message of the Shining Path and its charismatic leaders. Abandoning her husband and young daughter, she joins the battle. Her first person account is reported from prison, where she looks back at her childhood, early adulthood and her time with the guerilla group. In the face of regular interrogation she is still defiant, still holding on to a loyalty that cannot quite be dissolved despite the atrocities she has observed, participated in and experienced. Hers is a complicated narrative that takes the reader right into the conflicted reasoning, force of conviction, and group dynamics that shape a terrorist.

The women advance, marching along the gray patio. The first of them holds a banner with the image of Comrade Leader. Honor and glory to the proletariat and the people of Peru. Hair trained under green caps. Red blouses. Aquamarine skirts to the knee. Marching in formation. Educated in the shining trenches of combat. Jail others call it; prison. All at the same pace. Give one’s life for the party and the revolution. Banners of red flags with a yellow star. Torches in hand. Rhythm. Rhythm. Rhythm. Drum one. Drum two. Drum three. The feminine ferment rising. We travel a shining path. We struggle without truce to the end.

The second character is Melanie, a young photojournalist in love with a female artist who has moved to Paris. She imagines that the conflict in the mountains holds the story she is meant to record. A city dweller, she is quite unprepared for the harsh realities she finds. Her story is told in a first person present that highlights both her passions and her naivete. She will discover that her camera is neither welcomed by the villagers she meets, nor does it provide a shield against the sights, sounds and smells that will come to permeate her very being.

The next hamlet is a cloud of smoke. It’s hard to make out anything clearly. My camera feels heavier than usual. That’s fine; its weight anchors me to reality in this spectral place. What’s left when everything is done? Nothing. Where should I go look now? What should my lens focus on?

Finally, the truly innocent victim in the situation is the Indigenous peasant woman Modesta, who will lose everything as insurgents and soldiers repeatedly cross through her village, leaving a trail of rape, torture and murder. Her account is reported in the second person—a startling powerful perspective—until, toward the end when she finds her own voice and picks up her own thread. By then we see her slowly finding a resilience and strength that is fragile and determined at once, caught in war that makes no sense to her.

Every day at exactly four in the afternoon, new words parade into your ears just like the terrorists parade every morning. That if the class, they say, that if the proletariat, they say; that if the revolution, they say, that if the people’s war, they say, are saying, say. You only nod in agreement, already tuning out. They speak of people you don’t know, a certain Marx, a certain Lenin, a certain Mao, and a certain President Leader who is boss of them all. We’re all going to be equal, they say.

The atmosphere is claustrophobic. Wound through the plaited threads of the women’s stories are episodes of unattributed stream of consciousness and short quotes from political and philosophical sources. Repetition is employed to reinforce the relentlessness of the savage violence, and the point at which the narratives of the three protagonists blur in identical experiences of excruciating violation. The anonymity of the moment is in sharp contrast to the differing paths that lead each woman to that point, and the diverging courses their lives follow afterward. In an interesting Translator’s Note, Elizabeth Bryer brings to light some of the challenges of reflecting, in English, the different voices through use of rhythm, ideological focus and cultural references as appropriate to each woman.

In the end, Blood of the Dawn comes very close to risking losing its impact with the bludgeoning effect of the brutal tableau that unfolds. Fortunately this a spare, tightly controlled work and, to its credit, one that raises more questions than it answers, even leaving its own characters uncertain. A brave debut, indeed.

Blood of the Dawn by Claudia Salazar Jiménez is translated by Elizabeth Bryer and published by Deep Vellum.