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“A Girl Who Eats Sparrows” excerpt from a novella by Zhu Yiye (translated from the Chinese by Liuyu Ivy Chen) Photography by Yi Xin Tong
A Girl Who Eats Sparrows
Introduction by Liuyu Ivy Chen
In these first two chapters, a group of men are drinking, eating fried soybean worms, and recalling their youthful days during the Vietnam War with disturbing detail. While their wives are excluded from the room, their small children play around the table and quickly pick up the battleground language—they begin a killing game to mimic the war glory, craving the thrill. The adults offer no explanation or guidance to help the children understand the brutality of the war—they don’t seem to understand it either,
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Global Voices Interviews *Poland* Bronka Nowicka and Katarzyna Szuster in conversation with LIT’s JP Apruzzese
The Polish version of this interview appeared in Biuro Literackie on 23 March 2020
Every so often a writer comes along who shows us what literature can and perhaps is meant to do — offering not so much a different perspective as a different way of seeing. A writer whose work inhabits a space undetermined by convention, trends, topics of current interest, unafraid to put aside the noise of daily life and explore the unnoticed – unseen because ignored – life that is nevertheless fully within our grasp.
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“Regnum” A short story by Bronka Nowicka (translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Szuster) Artwork by Lula Bajek
Regnum
Mad Mary, Ursula, insane Nina, haunted Agnes, guide me. Let me stick my hands in the pockets of your housecoats, where the keys are nestled in the bundles of your handkerchiefs. Let me steal them and set the door to the kingdom ajar.
At night Nina kneads bread and weeps into it. In the kitchen, the milk gives off light until she pours it into dun flour and then it goes out. The woman kneads the dough in the dark. The table squeaks,
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Excerpts from the book length poem “Melismas” by Marlon Hacla (translated from the Filipino by Kristine Ong Muslim) Artwork by Tilde Acuña
Excerpts from
Melismas
Because I had been given healing salts, objects
that bring restoration, I shall brave the ripeness
of the week for you. I will sing about strengths
that seek loneliness but capable of saving
the world from impairment caused by its own
design. I have no more use
for you but each time I discard
the list that condones your utility,
a rice paddy’s hue turns pale, blankets are suddenly blown away
to reach every layer of the sky.
