Review: Transatlantico

Transatlantico by Witold Gombrowicz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had to labor through this book. Since last year I've been chomping at the bit to read Witold Gombrowicz ever since the publishing house, el cuenco de la plata, began releasing a series of his writings translated into Spanish. It seems Sergio Pitol has been commended for his translation of a difficult, and often deemed impossible, translation of this surreal biography of Witold's first days in Buenos Aires. Despite this praise, the Castilian Spanish was the first contribution to a vicissitude of excitement previous to opening up this book. The difficult language and syntax was the second contributor to a stymied initial intrigue for a glance into a renowned Polish writer who spent 10 years (maybe more?) of his life living in Argentina.

However, I was pleased to encounter a most unique approach to the idea of identity, loyalty- both to nation and to individuals connected to oneself by the sole fact of nationality-, and the apparent transformation a person experiences when choosing to live in another Nation-state different from the one they hold inherent allegiance to.

One factor to the uniqueness in this book is that the flow and tone liken to a stream of consciousness type of narrative which guides the reader at an accelerated pace. This quickness captures a desperation as the individual seems helpless to control much of anything, while the futility of settling down in his new environment unfolds into a game of tug-o-war and ambiguous submission. What is most peculiar of Trans-Atlantic is that Gambrowicz confronts the forces and circumstances that are both within him and beyond him which are innately Polish, and only exposed by his decision to stay in a foreign land.

This peculiar approach to a migrant's account of their first experiences in Buenos Aires was the last and most penetrating vicissitude that turned this read into a rigorous one, however not hindering, another example of Witold's ingenuity.

My expectation was high and in search for a fresh and unique glimpse into a city I know well as an immigrant. I hoped to find similarities in passionate narrative, both in critique and appraisal, descriptions of a fondness for the streets and the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires, the admiration and annoyance of the crass Porteño manner. But to my surprise, and to the demise of my expectation, very little of Buenos Aires is registered in Witold's account in regards to landscape, arquitecture, intercultural exchange, and potent cultural nuances. Despite this, Gambrowicz cleverly uses Buenos Aires as a latent antagonist to issues otherwise held at bay in an individual comfortable at home. Buenos Aires plays the part as agitator to an individual's conception of identity and loyalty to a nation or the idea of home and the individual's pertinence to that home. I was disheartened that many different combinations of cities and nationalities could have been used as the setting for this story. But at the same time I must appreciate this universal characteristic and adaptability of Trans-Atlantic.

In the end, it is fascinating how the author was able to strip Buenos Aires of its heterogeneity and vibrancy. He leaves a blank canvass only to sloppily splatter the abstract mess that is blind allegiance to nations and fellow countrymen and giving an account of an individual desperately moving along to complete the fleeting journey of escaping, or disconnecting, from ones identity that is heavily saturated by the enigma of nationalism. The process is unique and much harder to explain in word, but I believe Witold Gambrowicz succeeds in Trans-Atlantic. However, this conclusion is hindered by my lack of Polish.

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Review: Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda

Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda by Emmanuel M. Katongole
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Emmanuel M. Katongole opens with a concise background focusing on colonial intervention and oppression in the Great lake District of Africa. He intercalates it with a personal panorama of family history and the personal formation of his identity as an African, European Academic, Catholic, and current professor at a Protestant seminary in the United States. Identity formation is presented as a pillar to this book. Identity and how it is formed and then employed in life and faith is what this book is about; particularly our body and its position in the shadow of our histories and futures (in our present day to day). I note that despite citations and historical references in the book, I do not consider it a history book. However, it does use facts as a second pillar to position itself boldly on historic background and western interpretation of the identity and history of Africa, encouraging the interest of the reader, as it did mine, to gather further reading for historical knowledge.

Katongole unveils to the White Western reader the Christian church's compliance during the Scramble for Africa– specifically in the insalubrious and oppressive stratification of Bantu people in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. The 1994 Rwandan Genocide, beginning around Easter, is the culmination of this oppression and division, imperialism, and crusadesque intervention of the Church empowered by the Nation of Belgium. The author offers the genocide (culmination) as an opportunity to utilize it as a "mirror" for the Western Church, seeing its identity and posture in today's world. He takes to task different perceptions that distort the Church's posture when interacting with Africa– both in praxis and in thought.

His final conclusion guides the western reader to embrace the mirror in all its rawness and gruesomeness– using all the different body types; the victims, the opposers of the genocide, and those that helmed the country's developmental and philanthropical programs during the genocide (whom fled at first notion of a genocide) to see who we identify with. For instance– What would my body and its posture reflect in a race war in the United States?

The identity described and explained in the book– an identity adhered to the example of Jesus Christ in the Christian Bible, a Christidentity– nullifies any allegiances to institution, history, sex, race, or ethnicity. It subverts all identity. The intentional union between the spirit and the flesh cannot function if separated. If they do, we see distortion and extremism based on self-servitude, i.e. genocides. If the union is recognized, learned, and disciplined in practice, following Christ's Beatitudes for example, the extension of this union will manifest in the present by means of the body's posture; to love, to sacrifice, to revolt, to protest, to love one's enemy, and to struggle for justice– even in the ominous cloud of death and terror.

Emmanuel M. Katongole offers Christianity as a tool. It is a 3rd way in today's world. Utilized meekly and consciously, the human being can subvert societal norms and modes of seeing oneself, others, the purpose of life, and reposition themselves (the body and spirit) using the Rwandan narrative as the mirror. The lesson, like all history, is not to scoff and criticize how not to repeat errors and mistakes, to remember how great our nation is and decide what we need to do to bring its greatness back (or maintain its greatness); rather History is to be utilized to see ourselves and our culture and societies as a pluralistic reflection with a global narrative, recognizing that we are all capable of the greatest good & the greatest evil, even shedding violently the blood of our own kin. If we lose sight of this mirror offered by the author, or refuse to recognize it, or see it then shatter it out of anger, guilt, resentment, denial, fear; we will surely self destruct. Without a subversive imagination, we will create our own westernized, white, and "civilized", genocide.


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An ode to Amenaza

Edited by Olga García (Garden Oak Press, 2015)
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My translation of the poem Soneto La Carpio by poet, translator, and friend David Shook was published this past year in the bilingual anthology Frontera Piel/Skin Border. "It is an ode to his 'cock'"– as Andrew Perez of The Sun writes. Amenaza was a fighting cock purchased while David and I were living in Costa Rica back in 2008. Together we frequented the furrowed dirt streets (now mostly paved) of La Cueva del Sapo, or La Carpio. Cock fighting and breeding was not hard to come by in the neighborhood veined by a myriad of streets. Subversive to the hills of higher class neighborhoods in the hills, La Carpio is like an excavation, or quarry, squatted and developed by Nicaraguan refugees. One has to descend into La Carpio. In doing so, the individual cannot escape contemplating the neighborhood that beautifully takes to task societal structure and questions a collective majority that acquiesces the marginalized in present day structures.

The underpinning of the neighborhood is an organic response to fundamental needs for survival, escape, settlement (planting roots), raising families, and creating a collective identity in a foreign land.  At the age of 17 I did not realize the commonalties I shared with many of the friends in the neighborhood, nor my personal need for survival, escape, settlement, and a collective identity. La Carpio and its people were enriching my identity, deconstructing it and restructuring it. My preconceived notions of existence and life as I knew it were befuddled much to the breach found in language and privilege.

La Carpio's presence in San Jose subversively began, has grown, and now thrives. Shook has astutely taken a form, deconstructed it and restructured it, and possibly echoed this sequence. His sonnet has been molded into the flow and rhythm of life in La Carpio. His poetics bring a closeness to the investment of putting money towards a fighting cock in hopes for entertainment, winnings, and pride. It represents individuals identifying with risk, importance, and success while being battered daily by monotony, shallow pockets, and marginalization. Gruesome like a cock fight, David tears apart the traditional Sonnet and transfigures it with precision– fitting it like a glove on the milieu of La Carpio. The poem calls for a plummet into the opulent exposure found in La Carpio and its microcosm. I am grateful to have translated this poem, grateful to see her in print in a bilingual edition, grateful for David's ode to Amenaza, and grateful to a neighborhood and individuals that marked me deeply, much like the iron talons that continue to mark and slit a more recent generation of cocks in La Cueva del Sapo.