The World Shattered Yesterday
The wind bore water, the water bore fish,
the fish lifted the rocks, the rocks lifted the earth afloat.
The wind severed the earth in two:
one was ruled by a woman;
the other was ruled by a man.
They stretched a hundred yot apart,
Before they collided into one.
(Creation myth from the Pathamakappa Scripture)
The world shattered yesterday when the monks struck the drums at dawn, shattered into pieces with no signs of warning, when wind was still rocking the leaves and the birds were fluttering and feeding, unperturbed. I witnessed the world fall apart before my very eyes, full of horrors too viscous for words to describe. Just my father, myself and my two sisters (I’m obliged to call one of my sisters ‘Mother,’ as befits the first word in my life that I’ve ever uttered to her; my father denied being called my mother’s husband or anyone else’s, because my other sister was his only wife; with me and his close acquaintances, however, he acted like my mother’s husband and everyone else’s) had survived by a hair’s breadth. The others vanished in the explosion, incinerated to mere dust and ash, wiped out in the blink of an eye along with all remnants of the old world.
The old world that I had lived all my life.
The old world that was once familiar to everyone.
I don’t know if I should be happy or sad for having survived the annihilation of the world, this time and the previous times, with my father and my two sisters in this eerie emptiness with no water or food. The air was so thin that breathing like before was asphyxiating. Our spectral faces loomed out of our ashen eyes. I blinked drearily as the energy in my body dwindled. We should have all died along with the splinters of the old world. We should never have survived.
I moved closer to them as they clutched and clung onto each other. Their bulging glares struck a sharp, tremulous chord down my spine, the demeaning kind that depleted me since the old world. My father despised me and any men in that world for that matter; he was willing to destroy them at any given moment. Both my sisters were no different, except for one of them: my mother, who protected me when I grew up. All of my brothers died long before the old world itself perished.
I survived the old world thanks to my inhuman fortitude: I had to provide for my family by labouring in the farm and the production line of the family’s factory; I fed them, washed their dishes, cleaned up after them, chauffeured them around, and even lugged things around at family business’s construction site. In its normal state, my small and innocuous body served as an excellent shield since birth.
I was born after my mother or sister was pregnant with me for just fifteen days, weighing merely fifty grams, no more and no less. It wasn’t a natural birth or caesarean, but rather a birth forced by my father’s desire to terminate me. Throughout fifteen days of my mother’s pregnancy, my father repeatedly insisted on my abortion with suppository drugs and by squeezing me out. I clung on until the very last second before surrendering, wrung alive from my mother’s womb against my father’s wish.
My father didn’t stop there: when he saw me after I was aborted and still kicking, he proceeded to mangle me, throw me into a fruit blender that was left running for an entire year, and leave me to scorch in the sun for years after that. Yet I was alive and breathing, able to stand up and walk around just fine. Throughout the year of lying outside in the sun, my mother would hurriedly steal one or two drops of her breast milk to feed me, which kept me alive throughout my time in the old world and into this new one.
Since I refused to conveniently die like my other siblings, my father finally gave up on trying to kill me and, instead, banished me to the very edge of our land. There, he built me a house the size of a hand’s length, with meagre amounts of food and air to breathe, and enslaved me to a life of crippling toil in attending to each and every task of caring for him and his family. When I worked my body grew infinitely larger, preventing me from doing anything else besides the task at hand, and when dusk fell and the day’s work came to end, I shrivelled back to the size of a thumb, crawled back into my tiny house, and slept as deep as death until it was time to work again.
“You shouldn’t have survived. Ha… well then,” my father uttered his first sentence to me as I moved in closer.
“You survived it too,” I responded.
“Of course, he’d survive.” My sister, who was also my mother, chimed in before mounting herself on top of my body, her glare pregnant with the silent rage like that of an army’s high commander or a company’s CEO in the old world. I struggled to escape, but my body withered with each attempt.
“Let him go. I’m hungry,” my father demanded, and so I was released.
“Go on. Find me something to eat. Oh… no. You’ll run away from us. You better start digging here, in case there’s any food or water underground. Go on! Hurry up and dig! You hear me?”
Obeying my father’s command, I started digging for food and water that he suspected was buried below.
My dexterous hands worked, and my body grew larger by the minute, boundless with energy pulsing through every limb at full capacity. Relentless hours of digging deeper and deeper bore no signs of food, water or anything else but the everyday appliances that were excavated from the depths of the old world and kept on piling and multiplying on top of each other. My body grew infinitely larger than it had in the old world. I was no longer tired or hungry for anything else; I dug until my father’s voice, which was commanding me to stop, turned hoarse and feeble, scraping for its last breath.
At his command, I suddenly came to a halt, and a few seconds later, both of my sisters charged themselves towards me, shadowed by my father, who was clutching a machete that I had just unearthed. He clambered up my body, reached for my neck, and slit my throat open.
ลมซูน้ำ น้ำกะเล่าซูปลา
ปลาซูหิน หินซูดิน จังบ่จมลงได้
ลมพัดให้ เป็นดินสองแผ่น
แผ่นหนึ่ง หญิงอยู่เฝ้า เป็นเจ้าแผ่นดิน
แผ่นหนึ่ง ชายอยู่เฝ้า เป็นเจ้าแผ่นดิน
ไกลกันล้ำ พอประมาณฮ้อยโยชน์
แล้วจั่ง ติดต่อจ้ำ กันเข้าแผ่นเดียว
(กำเนิดโลกจาก คัมภีร์ปฐมกัป)
โลกแตกแล้วเมื่อวานนี้ตอนพระตีกลองเพลย่ำแรก,
แตกออกเป็นเสี่ยงๆ โดยไม่มีลางบอกเหตุมาก่อน ลมยังไกวใบไม้ นานานกยังกระโดดโลดเต้นกี้กๆ ฮ้องหากินปกติ ผมอยู่ในเหตุการณ์โลกแตกและเห็นสิ่งที่เกิดขึ้นนั้นเต็มสองตา สยดสยืดเกินพรรณนาออกมาได้หมด มีเพียงพ่อ ผม และพี่สาวของผมอีกสองคน (หนึ่งในสองคนนั่นผมต้องเรียกเธอว่า ‘แม่’ จึงจะถูกต้องกว่าจากตามที่ผมเคยเอ่ยปากพูดปากจากับเธอในคำแรกของชีวิต ต่อหน้าคนอื่นคนไกลพ่อของผมจะไม่แสดงตนว่าเป็นผัวของแม่หรือแม้แต่คนอื่นๆ เขามีเมียเพียงคนเดียวคือพี่สาวอีกคนของผม แต่ต่อหน้าผม ต่อหน้าคนใกล้ คนรู้จักมักคุ้นเขาแสดงตนเป็นผัวของแม่และคนอื่นๆ อย่างเคร่งครัด) ที่รอดตายมาได้ในสุดแสงตา คนอื่นๆ หายวับไปกับแรงระเบิด ตายไปเสียเสี้ยงหมดเกลี้ยงเป็นฝุ่นธุลี เพียงพริบตาเดียวทุกอย่างที่เคยเป็นโลกเก่าก็ไม่หลงเหลืออะไรอีกต่อไป
โลกเก่าที่ผมอาศัยอยู่มาตลอดชีวิต
โลกเก่าที่ทุกคนเคยคุ้นเคย
ไม่รู้ว่าผมควรจะดีใจหรือเสียใจที่มีชีวิตรอดมาได้จากการแตกสลายของโลกอีกครั้งหนึ่งในครั้งนี้ และรอดมาได้พร้อมกับพ่อและพี่สาวทั้งสองคน บนพื้นที่และความเวิ้งว้างว่างเปล่าและไม่มีน้ำไม่มีอาหารใดๆ แม้สักน้อยหนึ่ง อากาศหายใจนั้นก็บางเบาเกินกว่าจะผลีผลามสูดหายใจอย่างเคยเป็นมา ใบหน้าขมุกขะเม้าของทุกคนฉายผ่านแววตาอันอิดโรย ผมกะพริบตาถี่ๆ ร่างกายไร้เรี่ยวแรงลงอย่างรวดเร็ว ผมและพวกเขาน่าจะตายไปพร้อมกับโลกเก่าที่แตกสลาย ไม่ควรอย่างสุดยิ่งที่จะรอดชีวิตมาได้
ขยับตัวเข้าไปหาพวกเขาที่กำลังประคองตัวกองกอดกัน ดวงตาถลนถมึงทึงของพวกเขามองจ้องจนผมรู้สึกหวาดสะท้าน แววตาแบบนี้เป็นแววตาที่ทำให้ผมตัวเล็กลีบลงเสมอนับแต่ครั้งอยู่ในโลกเก่า พ่อไม่ชอบผมและไม่ชอบผู้ชายคนใดทั้งสิ้นในโลกเก่านั้น และก็พร้อมจะทำลายถึงแก่ชีวิตผู้ชายทุกๆ คนได้ทุกเมื่อ พี่สาวทั้งสองคนก็ไม่แตกต่างกันใด แม้หนึ่งคนที่เป็นแม่ของผมจะเคยปกป้องชีวิตผม จนผมเติบใหญ่มาได้ก็ตาม พี่-น้องผู้ชายของผมทุกคนล้วนตายไปหมดแล้ว ตายตั้งแต่ก่อนที่โลกเก่าจะแตกแล้ว
การที่ผมรอดพ้นอยู่ในโลกเก่าได้นั้นก็ด้วยความทรหดอดทนอันเกินผู้เกินคนและผมก็ต้องเป็นแรงงานหลักของครอบครัวในการทำไร่ไถนา งานในสายการผลิตของโรงงานอุตสาหกรรมของครอบครัว หุงหาอาหาร ล้างถ้วยล้างจาน ปัดกวาดเช็ดถูทำความสะอาด ขับรถขับเรือคอยรับใช้บริการ หรือกระทั่งแบกหามอยู่ตามไซต์งานก่อสร้างของกิจการของครอบครัว และร่างกายอันเล็กจ้อยในยามปกติ ไม่เป็นพิษเป็นภัยมาตั้งแต่เกิดนั่นก็เป็นเกราะกำบังชั้นดี
ผมเกิดมาตอนแม่หรือพี่สาวตั้งครรภ์ผมได้เพียงสิบห้าวัน แรกคลอดน้ำหนักห้าสิบกรัมไม่ขาดไม่เกินไปกว่านี้ ผมไม่ได้คลอดออกมาโดยตามธรรมชาติหรือผ่าตัดออกมา แต่คลอดออกมาด้วยการที่ต้องการจะทำลายชีวิตผมโดยพ่อ หลายต่อหลายครั้งในตลอดสิบห้าวันของการตั้งครรภ์ของแม่ที่พ่อพยายามให้แม่ทำแท้งเพื่อเอาผมออกมาทิ้งเสีย เหน็บยา บีบออก แต่ผมก็ดื้อดึงอย่างขนาด จนกระทั่งครั้งสุดท้ายที่ผมต้องจำยอมออกมาจากท้องของแม่ และไม่ตายอย่างสมใจนึกของพ่อ
พ่อไม่ได้หยุดอยู่แค่เพียงว่า: บีบออกมาจากท้องแล้ว เมื่อเห็นผมยังไม่ตาย เขาก็ไม่ได้ยอมแพ้ เขายังขยำขยี้ โยนลงในเครื่องปั่นผลไม้ แล้วเดินเครื่องปั่นอยู่เป็นเวลานับปีต่อเนื่องกัน เอาไปทิ้งไว้กลางแดดไว้เป็นปีๆ แต่ผมก็ไม่ตาย ยังหายใจ ยังลุกเดินไปมาปกติ และในตลอดขวบปีที่ผมนอนตากแดดอยู่นั้น แม่ก็มักจะลักลอบมาให้น้ำนมผมทีละหยดสองหยดอย่างรีบๆ เร่งๆ เสมอ และผมก็จึงมีชีวิตรอดมาได้ในโลกเก่าและก็รอดอีกครั้งในโลกใหม่นี้
เมื่อผมไม่ยอมตายลงอย่างง่ายๆ อย่างพี่-น้องคนอื่นๆ ท้ายที่สุดพ่อก็จึงยอมแพ้ และเนรเทศผมออกไปอยู่ไกลสุดของอาณาบริเวณบ้าน พ่อสร้างบ้านหลังเล็กๆ ขนาดกว้างคูณยาวคูณสูงแค่หนึ่งคืบมือให้กับผม มีอาหารแต่เพียงเล็กน้อย อากาศหายใจแต่เพียงเล็กน้อย และใช้งานผมอย่างหนักหน่วงที่สุดในทุกการสารพัดเพื่อเลี้ยงดูเขาและพวกเขา เวลาลงทำงานร่างกายของผมจึงจะมีขนาดขยายใหญ่ขึ้นไปเรื่อยๆ ไม่มีที่สิ้นสุด แต่ไม่สามารถออกเรี่ยวแรงทำอย่างอื่นได้เลยนอกจากการงานตรงหน้าเท่านั้น และพอตระเว็นค่ำคล้อยลงต่ำ เสร็จงานสำหรับวันแล้ว ร่างกายของผมก็จะค่อยๆ เล็กลีบฟีบฝ่อลงอย่างรวดเร็วเหลือขนาดเท่าเพียงนิ้วหัวแม่มือ และผมก็จะซุกเสือกตัวเองเข้าไปในบ้านหลังน้อยของผม พร้อมกับหลับลึกเป็นตายจนถึงเวลาทำงานอีกครั้ง
‘มึงไม่น่ารอดชีวิตมาได้เลย ฮึ..แต่ก็ดี’ ประโยคแรกที่พ่อเอ่ยต่อผมเมื่อผมขยับเข้ามาใกล้ๆ
‘พ่อก็รอดมาได้เหมือนกัน’ ผมตอบโต้ออกไป
‘แน่นอนพ่อต้องรอดอยู่แล้ว’ พี่สาวที่เป็นทั้งแม่ของผมด้วยว่าออกมา ก่อนที่เธอจะขยับเข้ามาคร่อมทับตัวของผมเอาไว้ สายตาของเธอถมึงทึงราวกับแววของผู้บัญชาการระดับสูงของกองทัพหรือประธานบริษัทจำกัดมหาชนในโลกเก่าที่กำลังโกรธเกรี้ยว ผมพยายามดิ้นฮึดสู้ แต่กลับทำให้ร่างกายของผมหดเล็กลงไปเรื่อยๆ ตามการดิ้นรนแต่ละครั้ง
‘ปล่อยมัน กูหิว’ พ่อออกคำสั่ง ร่างของผมจึงเป็นอิสระ
‘ไปเลยมึง ไปหาอะไรมาให้กูกิน เอ๊ะ..แต่ไม่ดีกว่า เดี๋ยวมึงจะหลบหนีจากพวกกูไป ให้มึงตะกุยโกยดินนี่ดีกว่า เผื่อว่าจะมีอาหารและน้ำเหลืออยู่บ้างใต้ดินที่ถมอยู่นี่ เอาซี ชักช้าอยู่ทำไม กูบอกให้มึงตะกุยดิน ไม่ได้ยินหรือ’
ผมจึงเริ่มตะกุยดินตามคำสั่งของพ่อเพื่อจะค้นหาอาหารและน้ำที่พ่อว่ามันถูกถมอยู่ใต้เบื้องล่างนี้
มือของผมทำงานอย่างว่องไวชำนิชำนาญ ร่างกายของผมเริ่มขยายใหญ่ขึ้นตามลำดับ และเรี่ยวแรงของผมก็มากมายมหาศาล อวัยวะทุกส่วนของผมทำงานเต็มกำลัง นับนานหลายชั่วโมงที่ผมตะกุยโกยดินลึกลง ลึกลง แต่ไม่มีทีท่าว่าจะพบอาหารและน้ำหรืออื่นใด มีเพียงอุปกรณ์เครื่องใช้ในชีวิตประจำวันในโลกเก่าเท่านั้นที่ถูกขุดขึ้นมา อุปกรณ์เครื่องใช้ทุกอย่างที่จำเป็นในชีวิตประจำวัน จำนวนมากมายมหาศาลที่ผมนำมันขึ้นมา กองพะเนินเทินทึกไว้ ร่างกายผมขยายใหญ่ขึ้นไปเรื่อยๆ เกินกว่าร่างกายของผมที่เคยได้ขยายใหญ่สุดในโลกเก่า ผมไม่รู้สึกเหน็ดเหนื่อยหรือหิวโหยอะไรอีกต่อไปแล้ว ตะกุยโกยซ้ำๆ อย่างนั้นจนกระทั่งเสียงของพ่อสั่งให้ผมหยุดด้วยน้ำเสียงที่แหบโหยคล้ายคนที่กำลังอ่อนแรงจนเกือบใกล้สิ้นใจตายอยู่รอมร่อแล้วนั่น
ฉับพลันผมหยุดลงตามเสียงสั่ง และไม่กี่วินาทีต่อมา พี่สาวทั้งสองคนของผมก็กระโจนเข้าใส่ พร้อมกับพ่อที่ถือมีดปลายแหลมที่ผมเพิ่งตะกุยโกยขึ้นมาจากดินตามติดเข้าหา พ่อค่อยๆ เดินไต่ตามลำตัวของผมขึ้นมา แล้วมาหยุดอยู่ตรงที่ลำคอ แล้วปาดมีดลงไปบนคอหอยของผม.
The Art and Politics of Translation: A Conversation with Palin Ansusinha
INTERVIEW by Ron Edwards
What does it mean to move from one language to another? How does the act of translation empower? What ethical challenges does the power to translate carry? And how does English continue to hold outsized influence in global conversations?
Great River Review’s Translations Editor Ron Edwards, a long-term resident of Thailand now based in Minneapolis, speaks with Bangkok-based Palin Ansusinha, translator of Phu Kradart’s short story, “The World Shattered Yesterday.”
In your work at soi literary in Bangkok, you’ve been translating some phenomenal Thai writers—namely Uthis Haemamool and Phu Kradart. These are two contemporary writers whose wild creativity and language-play and boldness have made them important forces in literature within Thailand. But unfortunately, they’re still virtually unknown to other global readers.
As you know, in Thai there’s an idiom กบในกะลา (gob nai gala), a frog in a coconut shell, and it refers to someone who’s unaware of how limited their knowledge is. They live under a little dome, thinking it’s the entire world. We may think we know the world. We might even consider ourselves experts in something. But there’s a vast world beyond us, and we often fail to realize how little we actually know. Do you see translation work as akin to lifting up the coconut shell? Is there something else you’d compare it to?
Every time I come across this idiom, I’m always struck by a series of questions: how did the frog end up inside the coconut shell in the first place? Surely, it cannot be dumb enough to get trapped? And if it was, doesn’t the frog have enough willpower of its own to actually jump out of the coconut shell? Because isn’t that what frogs do—jump? Yet, it also appears to me that this might be an interesting metaphor, with all its illogical and frustrating qualities, for thinking about the current situation for the politics of literature in translation. I was a gob nai gala myself before discovering that this metaphor is not at all ‘Thai’ but is shared by other Southeast Asian cultures. This got me thinking about how little I knew about the other frogs who live so close to my coconut shell, compared to much more remote cultures that I had access to from the stories I had read, which were either written in or translated into English.
When I refer to Southeast Asia, I do so on purpose as a geopolitical legacy of American imperialism after the Cold War, and as a term constructed by the imperial powers to identify, categorize and homogenize peoples, knowledges, and stories in order to continue to dominate knowledge production. The English-speaking market is undoubtedly the largest book market in the world, and most texts translated into English are distributed through the ex-imperial or neo-imperial metropolitans in the US and UK. This suggests the majority of texts translated into English from other various languages have been chosen, first and foremost, by Western publishers to appeal to the tastes and demands of predominantly Western audiences, before they are distributed globally.
I think it’s worth inquiring about the presence of the English-speaking world in the production and distribution of translated literature for Thai audiences. Why are certain books made available to us and others are not? Who determines which books should be translated? How much of our assumptions of others are skewed as a result of this cultural production for the English-speaking public’s taste, which, in turn, determines what local publishers in their country choose to import and which authors to canonize?
The predicament of the ‘Third World’ frog is that we are trapped inside our individual coconut shells, unaware that the edges of our shells might be touching each other in some parts. So, why must we wait for our coconut shells to be lifted up by the invisible hands of Western publishers? Can we not recognize each other’s proximities and distances, our similarities and differences, by and for ourselves?
It hasn’t been a year since soi literary took its leap into the seas of the global publishing world, but we’re beginning to become acquainted with the works of publishers like Seagull Books in India and Glass House in China, who are trying to jump out of the closed universe of their coconut shells and exercise their amphibious abilities of translation. For example, Seagull Books is reversing the flow of translated literature by commissioning translations directly from other languages, then publishes them for both the South Asian and global audiences, while Glass House is trying to fill in the vacuum of Southeast Asian Literature in China since the 1980s and is currently building an exciting list of authors from Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
It’s no secret that literary gatekeepers implicitly, if not explicitly, police the kinds of writing that get published and promoted. And I’m not absolving myself of any guilt in this process. In my current role as an editor at Great River Review and as an educator, my own biases and my background influence the work I gravitate toward in ways I’m sure are often invisible to me. What I think might be less apparent to a lot of people though are the multi-faceted ways that translation, while exposing authors and their work to a wider audience, also reproduces inequalities. Could you speak to this phenomenon and how you’ve seen it play out in the Thai context?
Given the contexts in which literary translators in Thailand are working under, they have the potential to become gatekeepers because their linguistic mobility is highly sought after in a country where foreign language, especially English, proficiency is a privilege. However, I think that many literary translators are aware of this position they have, how their individual tastes can determine which authors and what kinds of literature gets exposed to a wider audience. It’s even more complicated when there’s barely any institutional or economic support to make a rewarding career out of translation, limiting it to only be pursued by those who can afford it.
We are seeing more contemporary Thai authors being introduced to the global audience in the past few years, thanks to the work of their translators like Mui Poopoksakul, Kong Rithdee, Tyrell Haberkorn, and Sho Fukutomi (to name several names). Up to now, translators in Thailand have had to act as agents to pitch their works to foreign publishers. So with the addition of a literary agency in Thailand’s literary ecology, I hope that soi might help carry out this extra work for both translators and authors. Literary agents are able to catalyze a potential working relationship between translator, author, and publisher and help to widen the local industry’s access to new or unheard literary voices.
However, as mentioned before, translation will continue to be a thankless job as long as there is no initiative at a policymaking level to protect freelancers from being underpaid by publishers, who are still fighting to keep their heads above water as we all plunge further into the unimaginative pit of military oligarchy. The Thai literary and translation community has a long way to go, but I believe hope glimmers in my generation and the next as our appetite for new information and transcultural dialogues grows insatiable. We are seeing real and effective models of institutional support and promotion for literary translation all around us, for example in South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Japan, etc. Why can’t we make that possible here?
We’re ecstatic to be publishing your translation of a Phu Kradart short story, “The World Shattered Yesterday.” This is a story that floored me. Could you share a little bit of your own relationship to his writing and maybe offer some story context for our readers?
I was given the opportunity to translate Phu Kradart’s short story, “The World Shattered Yesterday” (โลกแตกแล้วเมื่อวานนี้), when I started working with Judha Su, soi’s founder and editor-in-chief. Like its name, the story is set in this disembodied reality of a post-apocalyptic landscape after everything has been completely wiped out, leaving behind the spectral figures of one family, who survived the annihilation that, we are told, has happened many times before. The story alludes to the cyclical history of Thailand’s political violence and erasure and evokes the familiar images of a recurring nightmare-turned-reality in Thai society: feudalism reproduced in the heteropatriarchal family model, the struggles against oppression of the working class, and their very real and visceral effects.
I was first introduced to Phu Kradart’s work through his novel, เนรเทศ or Exile, and was instantly struck by the musicality and brackishness of the language, how it moves in and out of Thai and Laotian dialect, and escapes a total grasp of my understanding. This reading experience has allowed me to think about my relationship with language in a more oral and material way—a reminder of how much deftness with a language can be subversive in allowing language to be owned by those who speak it, rather than for it to become a tool of oppression.
Together with pieces from other writers, translators, rappers, and musicians, this short story will be included soi studio’s upcoming bilingual publication titled Not Your Standardised Language. Unlike Exile, “The World Shattered Yesterday” is written in standard Thai, but Phu Kradart at times plays with the relationship between the written and spoken word that is so integral to our language to create new meanings when the existing Thai fails. For me, reenacting these things is perhaps what’s so challenging about translating his work (although I can’t imagine what it would be like to translate Exile where this happens line by line!). Another challenge I find with Thai prose in general is how generous we can be with our verbs. It’s grammatically possible to consecutively string together a train of verbs in Thai, but this would be unwieldy when translated word-for-word into English. So most of the time I find myself struggling to reenact these rhythms in English without compromising the grammar and flow.
Could you speak to some of the other linguistic challenges of moving from Thai to English in literary translations? What’s on your mind as you try to recreate a Thai reading experience for a non-Thai audience?
I’m currently translating Uthis Haemamool’s novel จุติ or The Fabulist into English, which is soi literary’s pilot translation project. What I find most challenging is the stylistic breadth and polyphony of voices in the novel. Since the story is told by five different characters from different generations, not only do they possess distinctive voices but the storytelling conventions also vary accordingly. The novel attempts to play around with certain literary conventions in order to refuse the boundaries we were meant to exist within—exploring, for example, how knowledge is passed down in oral form, how explanation proliferates through the citational space of footnotes.
What I’m also learning throughout the translation process of The Fabulist is how to listen for agency, especially for women characters who must navigate the oppressive conditions that Thai historiography had them written under. How can I look for agency in a language that I find misogynistic? How can I retell a history in which the female body is repeatedly dissected and hyperbolized, or in which the female voice is severed from its own tongue? I find that all of this requires one to nimbly dance around literal translation and find other possible interpretations. จุติ [pronounced ‘Juti’], the Thai title of this novel, refers to the movement from one realm of life to another, a transfiguration. This makes me think about translation, which literally means to move from one place to another, as a struggle to find other possibilities of existing—and, to me, it is an extremely political act.
In this conversation, you’ve already touched on how soi literary has introduced something new to Thailand’s literary ecology; the literary agency model hasn’t really been a part of the Thai publishing industry previously. I understand that soi literary is only one branch the soi platform. Could you explain exactly what ชอย |soi is?
ซอย | soi is a platform founded in 2019 by Judha Su. Before I started working at soi, I’d already known Judha as a writer, critic and editor working between the local and international fields of contemporary art and literature. ซอย | soi stemmed from Judha’s interests in writing, translating, editing, and publishing practices, which have unfortunately been pushed to the margins of the Thai contemporary art scene, which values exhibition-making over knowledge production. Strangely enough, the art scene was also where I met Judha; I was searching for a bilingual environment where I could be more creative and experimental with my writing and translation, and I was seeking a potential path to hone them in the long run.
While Judha and I agree that translation is essential in breaking intellectual inertia, the ability to move in and out of languages is also a privilege that tends to produce gatekeepers. So, in a way, soi literary was developed from the idea to break down these barriers. Operating as a literary agency, we started out with Uthis Haemamool’s The Fabulist as our pilot project, before slowly forming a small community of Thai writers and artists we now represent. Being new to the scene, we are aware that this is a difficult endeavor that takes time, but we also believe that it’s necessary to start making these issues known within the Thai as well as international literary community.
By mid-2020, the ‘soi squad’ slowly came into formation and, with the addition of each new member, the structure of the platform shaped itself according to each of our skills and interests. Now, soi is a hybrid of three main parts: a publishing press (soi press), a literary agency (soi literary), and a creative studio (soi studio).
soi press is mainly run by our Thai editor Mookdapa Yangyeunpradorn and Chayanin Thaijongrak as editorial assistant. They are half-way through Damned Be Patriarchy, a series of five translated books which features works from writers such as Alok Vaid-Menon, Sara Ahmed and bell hooks. In addition, Judha is currently editing the Thai translation of Bangkok Is Ringing, a sound studies analysis of the political protests that transformed Thailand in 2010-2011. soi studio, on the other hand, is where we work with other creative practitioners like artists, musicians, and designers to explore alternative modes of publishing and creative production, as well as receive commissioned works to raise money for the platform. soi studio is currently managed by Paaroon Chuprasert and soi’s main designer Khanchayot Yaempradit.
Other than Phu Kradart and Uthis Haemamool, which Thai writers should our readers be reading?
Thailand is now entering one of the biggest cultural transitions in recent history; its citizens are dreaming up a new society out loud. To listen to these speeches, shouts, and songs reverberating on the streets and online has been incredibly moving. These demands and criticisms are articulated in all sorts of tones and timbres; some are striking in their sardonicism and sentimentality, while others are forged in a smithery of wit and wordplay. Of course, not all of them have been translated into English, but to give a few examples there are the performance poems (กลอนลำ/klon lam) and interviews with former lèse-majesté prisoner Molam Bank Patiwat Saraiyaem, translated by Peera Songkünnatham; and the letters that have been written by recent political prisoners of Article 112, which are about to be translated into English as part of soi studio’s upcoming collaboration with the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights Centre.
About the author
Phu Kradart was born and raised in the Isan region of Thailand, Thanat Thammakaew, who also goes by the pen name Phu Kradart, is the author of two volumes of short stories, Like a Body Without Organs [ดั่งเรือนร่างไร้องคาพยพ] (2015), shortlisted for Southeast Asia’s most prestigious literary prize, the SEA Write Award, in 2017, and Hour Before the March [ชั่วโมงก่อนพิธีสวนสนาม] (2016); the poetry collection Remains To Be Seen [ไม่ปรากฏ] (2013); the novel Exile [เนรเทศ] (2014) shortlisted for SEA Write Award 2015; and the recently published epic novel 24/7-11 (2020).
About the translator
Palin Ansusinha translates, writes and researches contemporary culture and politics with a special interest in literature, art and performance. She works at soi literary, which is a part of ซอย | soi, a bilingual platform run by a new generation of Thai editors, writers and translators based in Bangkok, Thailand. She is currently working on the English translation of Uthis Haemamool's 2015 novel จุติ or The Fabulist.
About the interviewer
Ron Edwards is a fiction writer and reformed copywriter. Or perhaps more accurately, he’s now dedicated himself to writing a different kind of fiction than he did in his previous career. He has recently traded the tropics of Thailand (where he’s lived for 17 years) for the frozen beauty of Minnesota. He considers his current trips back and forth between these two homes as an alternating steamy sauna and ice plunge—in extreme slow motion.