To Adopt Call 0800 (But Not If You're White)

"Black children need black families," says Islington Council. What a slap in the face for all the mixed families riding the number 43 bus to Highbury&Islington where I saw this poster. If the point is to encourage black couples, singles and families to adopt, why not find a positive, inclusive message that broadens the circle of all adopters rather than reducing it?

There are several reasons why this campaign makes me absolutely furious. The first is that I've recently heard a string of anti-adoption comments from friends and acquaintances: surely adoptive children must always feel a sense of loss and will ultimately track down their genetic parents; surely it must be very strange indeed to raise a child who doesn't look like yourself; surely you can't love an adopted child in quite the same, natural way as you would love your own.

What utter rubbish.

None of the adopted people in my family and circle of friends want to track down "their parents", for the very simple reason that they already know their parents. They're right there, on the other end of the phone line, talking about the neighbour's kids and the dog's latest tricks. We rarely read misery memoirs written by happy adopted sons and daughters with ordinary lives because, well, it doesn't make for a particularly thrilling memoir (nor a miserable one). There is a disproportionate focus on people with bad adoption experiences, for the obvious reason that those with good ones don't have an interesting tale to tell. As a headline, "Yeah, my parents are ok, I guess" isn't going to get a lot of clicks.

Of course, there are people who were adopted by horrible parents, or by parents who were not horrible but failed to make them feel loved and accepted. The other day, again on the number 43 bus, I overheard a black man in his 80s tell a woman about "the white man who raised me". He went on to imitate his adoptive/foster father's self-righteous, hectoring voice, which still rang in his head decades later. However, it sounded like race was the least of the problems in that particular relationship. And more well-intentioned parents can make their child feel at home in his/her new family in a number of ways, as Lola Jaye has written in this thoughtful piece.

There are other potential problems. I know adopted children who have had to endure stares, swivel-eyed curiosity, completely inappropriate questions from strangers ("have you tried to track down your birth parents?" after 10 mins of meeting someone), only because they did not look like their parents. Having spent the morning reading up on the trans-racial adoption debate (thanks, Islington Council), I found some heartbreaking pieces by people who recalled being bullied, beaten up and made to feel ashamed of the way they looked. The problem here isn't the mixed family. The problem is society. White parents don't need to stop adopting black children: society needs to stop being racist.

This is the second reason Islington Council's campaign makes me so angry. It reinforces the perception that children, and people in general, feel most comfortable and happy among people who look like themselves. It reinforces the perception that closer genetic links equal closer emotional links.
This is a) racist.
And b), the obvious conclusion to this train of logic is that adopted parents - and adopted children - can't ever be as good/happy/complete as genetically linked families. It supports the views of hateful people who say they couldn't love an adopted child the same way they would love one that shares their DNA. ("Sorry love, hope you're feeling comfy in your care home, it's just that my ideal baby is a clone").
So, c), the poster gives white and Asian people a reason not to adopt black children ("even the Council says it doesn't work"),
and d) it discourages adoption in general by emphasising genetic closeness.

Well done, poster people.

I wish Islington Council spent its money on encouraging all parents to adopt. We don't need more reasons why we shouldn't adopt. We don't need to hear that we're the wrong parents for this or that child. We need to hear the other facts: that most adopted children thrive in their families, that adoption is a great source of joy and happiness, and a wonderful way to show that love and emotional belonging matter more than society's lazy prejudices and stereotypes.

Radetzkymarsch

"Sometimes I look at my children when they are asleep. Their faces seem utterly strange then, hardly recognisable, and I see that they are strange people from a time that is yet to come and that I will not experience... Sometimes it seems that it's the cruelty of their time, of the future, that overcomes the children in their sleep. I don't want to experience that time!"

"Yes, yes!" said the captain.

(Joseph Roth, Radetzkymarsch, 1932) 


A friend once told me about a (French? German? Polish?) writer who translated a page of prose a day as a way of keeping his literary muscles in shape. I'm not going to be that ambitious, but I'll occasionally be translating short passages and bits of dialogue from books that strike me as worth sharing.

I'm nearing the end of Radetzkymarsch; the more chapters I read, the slower the progress, probably because I suspect it's going to end badly and I can't bear it. It's the faces of the dead emerging behind a ghostly roulette table in the middle of the book. Whichever way I look at that particular symbol, it just doesn't bode well.

And yet there is surely a chance Carl Joseph will get out of his alcoholic, 90-proof hole, make up with his father and find happiness in a friendly and worthwhile profession such as, say, book-binding.
Isn't there? There must be.

Also: how was Joseph Roth able to write the above passage in 1932?

PS - here's the final passage of the chapter I just finished. You might understand why I'm terrified of reading on, and at the same time desperate to know what's next:

He did not know, old Mr von Trotta, that fate was spinning bitter sorrows for him as he slept. He was old and tired, and death was already waiting for him, but life did not let him go. Like a cruel host it kept him at the table, because he had not yet tasted all the bitterness that had been prepared for him."

Waaah!

Spring Awakening

I saw the sun today. But for those who are still trapped by fog, rain or permafrost, here's an uplifting thought: great literary treasures lurk beneath the freezing point. Dickens, Tolstoy, Proust, H.C. Andersen, Mary Shelley, Byron and many others wrote their most famous novels/poems/stories under trying meteorological conditions. So: is bad weather great for fiction? (Piece for the Huffington Post).

Speaking of seasons: Jonathan Franzen translated Spring Awakening (Fruehlingserwachen, a play by Frank Wedekind about sexual awakening) into English a few years ago. I knew Franzen spoke German but didn't know he spoke it well enough to translate from it. Does anyone know if he's translated other plays or stories?

A friend once told me about a writer who translated a page of prose a day as a form of literary gymnastics. It makes sense: translation forces you to obsess over the precise meaning of each word as well as entire phrases and passages, and find the right balance between accuracy and beauty. It's such a hard exercise and I don't do it nearly often enough, certainly not in a literary context. Poetry is, of course, even more difficult to translate. Earlier this year I tackled Das Blaue Klavier ("The Blue Piano") by Else Lasker-Schueler. I could feel my brain stretching and reaching towards the right words just as I stretch my fingers towards my toes in yoga class. The results were about as elegant as a downward dog.

Consider the first line:

Ich hab zu Hause ein blaues Klavier
Und kenne doch keine Note

The literal translation would be "I have a blue piano at home /  and don't know a single note". Not very satisfying. The music is lost, and in a poem about a piano, music is everything. I tried out lots of different versions and looked up some existing translations, but in the end, I gave up. I basically decided that it was better not to translate it at all than to come up with something unsatisfying. What do you think? Should we even bother to translate poetry or simply tell readers to go and learn more languages?

Brecht & the Dividends Opera

"A publishing house is different from a screw factory, but they follow the same economic laws. If I make losses, I can't afford to pay advances to authors."

- says Hans Barlach, a media investor who is embroiled in a power struggle at Suhrkamp, a legendary German publishing house with a list that stretches from Brecht and Hesse to Habermas.

There's something very Brechtian about the conflict. A flamboyant widow who basically inherited the company from her late husband; a bold minority shareholder who charges into this bastion of high-brow prose and refined literary salons, demanding a higher dividend.

I'm waiting for someone to post a Brechtian take on this on youtube, complete with "The Screw Factory Song" and Suhrkamp's panicking authors as the Greek chorus. How about "The Dividends Opera"?

You can read the full story here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/25/tug-of-war-german-publisher

Three Kurdish activists killed - update

An update on the horrific killings in Paris:
Apparently AFP mistakenly reported that the crime took place at the Kurdish institute. This was wrong: they took place at another Kurdish organisation in Paris. I'm relieved for the people at the institute, but the crime remains hideous and inexcusable.
This is the institute's statement on the case:

"Three Kurdish activists assassinated in Paris.
BUT NOT AT THE KURDISH INSTITUTE

Three Kurdish activists were assassinated on Wednesday 9th January in Paris, on the premises of the Kurdish Information Centre, in circumstances that have yet to be clarified.
Amongst them are Sakine Cansiz, a well known PKK public figure who has spent many years in Turkish prisons.
This triple murder, which has taken place in the context of the beginning of a dialogue between the Turkish Government and the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to find a peaceful settlement of the Kurdish question, has plunged the Kurdish community into deep mourning.
Through an incredible and distressing lack of professionalism, the Agence France Press, in its first despatches, indicated that these assassinations took place on the premises of the Kurdish Institute.
This information was relayed by the radios and the non-stop news channels in France, but also in Turkey and other countries, arousing consternation amongst the Institute’s friends, hundreds of whom are calling us and sending us messages.
We have approached the AFP management that has apologized and corrected its mistake as of 8 am. We thank all our friends for their solidarity and call on the French authorities to make every effort to cast a light on this horrible massacre perpetrated in Paris and which has created a dangerous precedent as well as greatly worried the Kurdish community in France."

Paris executions

Reuters reports that three Kurdish women have been found shot dead at the Kurdish Institute in Paris.

"The bodies of three Kurdish women who appeared to have died from gunshots to the head were found early on Thursday at the Kurdish Institute in Paris, a police source said... one of the women killed was Sakine Cansiz, a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group."

I did most of my research the Registrar at the institute. The people there were wonderfully helpful and dedicated to preserving Kurdish culture.

 

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the conflict in Turkey, and whatever the politics of the women, I think we can all agree that nothing justifies this brutal execution of three people. 

The library at the Kurdish institute was a place where anyone could come and read Kurdish poetry and novels in translation - works you would find nowhere else. It gave a bit of breathing space to a part of Kurdish culture that has been stifled by the violence: literature, poetry, song. Sweden and France are the only real hubs of Kurdish culture in exile, because their governments have supported translators and intellectuals in their efforts to preserve Kurdish culture and let it live.

I'm so horrified by this crime. My thoughts are with the victims' families, and with the brave and dedicated people at the institute.

Child booksellers of Mumbai

Good morning! Just read an interesting feature by Sonia Faleiro for the New York Times about the child booksellers of Mumbai:

Holding aloft his wares, he dashes toward a black BMW and in his cracking preteen voice addresses the woman inside: “ ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’?”
 
It made me think of the pirate vendors in Peru who inspired my short story for World Literature Today, Anyone Have Any Idea What Jesus Wrote Here?. 
The story is about an expat author in the Andean town of Huayhuash who spots a pirated copy of her book at an illegal vendor's stall. Her book is about the only scene in the Bible where Jesus writes something - but nowhere in the Bible does it say what he wrote. Worried that she'll report him to the police, the vendor outsmarts her by making one vital change to the book...
The story was published in WLT's print edition in November; you can order it here.