From ULR
Issue 12 – Gender & its Discontents
Editorial: Translations – ULR Issue 12, Gender & Its Discontents
Worlds unfold across Spanish, Tamil, and Hindi; discontent simmers. Reading, cooking, Christmas, and corpses test limits, urging a re-examination of social constructs.
It is always a glittering pleasure to read submissions for the Translations section – the world opens up. It is always, also, a rough task to make choices among the phenomenal entries that we receive, and curating the “Gender and Its Discontents” issue was no different.
I am delighted to present to you translations from Spanish, Tamil, and Hindi. Despite the various languages, the discontent with gender is evident as a thematic strain through the four translations. Limits – of ambition, of attraction, of being, of desire, of gender – are tested, prompting one to re-examine this social construct.
In Three Stories by Sureshkumara Indrajit, translated from Tamil by Subhashree Beeman, mundane activities like reading, and cooking unsettle gender norms. In Christmas by Daniel Hurtado, translated from the Spanish by Claudia Excaret Santos, a simple Christmas celebration engenders a glimpse into the schism between societal expectations and personal expectations of success. In Leellann’s Story by Manisha Kulshreshtha, translated from Hindi by Priyanka Sarkar, the tragedy of triple jeopardy is recounted through a corpse – a haunting tale with a strong resemblace to heinous crimes against women in India. In Firefly by Shubham Negi, translated from Hindi by Shruti Sonal, the idea of celebrating Queer Pride Month disrupts the ease of a classroom setting, prompting the principal an opportunity to self-reflect.
I may continue to write about my personal engagement with gender within these translations, but I will stop for now, and urge you to dive into this folio – it is for you to read, to ruminate, and re/think how gender is coloured by caste, class, race, and sexuality.
Happy reading!
Sonakshi Srivastava
Sonakshi Srivastava is a writing tutor at Ashoka University, Sonepat, India. She is one of the recipients of South Asia Speaks mentorship programme (cohort 2021), working on translating the Hindi novel, “Titli” into English under the mentorship of Arunava Sinha. She was the contributing translator columnist at “The Bilingual Window’. She was longlisted for The Stinging Fly Translation Bursary 2022, and was awarded the Katharine Bakeless Nason scholarship for the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference 2023. Her works have previously appeared in or are appearing in ASAP art, Usawa, Proseterity, The Monograph, Alipore Post, Hakara, potluck zine, orangepeel mag, Qissa mag, and Rhodora among others.