Words Without Borders Campus

In Wales, a "Blue Book" helps a mother and son cope with an apocalypse

Posted on November 22, 2021

"Sometimes I think it's impossible for someone to be as beautiful and ugly as my mother," comments the fourteen-year-old co-narrator of Manon Steffan Ros's award-winning Llyfr Glas Nebo (The Blue Book of Nebo). The Welsh novel, recently published in English translation and excerpted in Words Without Borders a few years back, is in the form of dual diary entries from a boy and his mother following a world-ending war.

From South Africa, Affirmation and a Call to Action

Posted on November 10, 2021

Mass student meeting in Capetown, South Africa. By Tony Carr, CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

(This post follows up on some of the ideas in last week's article, "I Affirm…," which gives background on the South African rapper SIEP, his translator Andre Trantraal, and the Kaaps language.)

"I Affirm the Soul in Each Person": Hip-Hop Poetry from South Africa

Posted on November 03, 2021

Image: Zanele Montele, iThemba'lethu, 2020, acrylic on canvas.

I affirm the soul in each person
I affirm the soul in each person
It’s clean as a bone with the vocal tone
Who is still suffering?

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An Iranian Rap Reminding Americans to Vote

Posted on November 02, 2021

A year ago, we wrote about a funny Iranian rap song reminding Americans of the far-reaching effects of their votes. With voting happening again today in some parts of the US, we thought it was a good time to re-post this relevant message from the Dasandaz Band.

"Serpent": A Thought-Provoking Indigenous Poem

Posted on October 07, 2021

Guarani protester in São Paulo, 2019. By Romerito Pontes, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.

With Indigenous People's Day approaching on the 11th, we thought it was a good time to re-post Sonia Adams's article about Alberto Luna's "Serpent," translated from Guaraní by Susan Smith Nash and Susy Delgado —Eds.