Contemporary International Writers

Yoko Towada’s The Emissary is a chilling novel set in dystopian Japan where the elderly (young, middle, and aged) have corrupted the earth and its environment for the young “because they’d been so feckless” (93). The older generation’s “feckless” ness in this novel has resulted in a general and devastating decline in the health of Japan’s […]

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In her novel The Emissary, Tawada is using the absurd. This is an interesting notion especially in literature as it has been used multiple times and in different cultures. If we go back to the beginning of the twentieth century when the notion of absurd in literature was theorized in Europe, we see that it was […]

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The Emissary is based on a futuristic world where nature and society have been turned on their heads in every way. The young are weak, the old are strong, parents acting like children and children acting like adults, and never knowing if you are going to wake up as the same gender you were when you went to bed. […]

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In Yoko Tawada’s The Emissary, Tawada creates a dystopian world in which the old never die and the young are weak and sickly. Keeping in mind that this work has been translated from Japanese to English, Tawada’s gives us a vivid view of this dystopian Japan. She tells us that Japan has become completely isolated from the world, […]

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One element of craft that I was very impressed by in this book is the pacing. Right from the beginning, I had so many questions about the world Yoko Tawada has placed us in. What has happened to the planet? Why are the children crippled, and where are their parents? Why is Japan so isolated […]

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Yoko Tawada’s The Emissary takes place in a post-apocalyptic society in which Japan has closed itself off from the rest of the world.  In many ways, the people of this society are becoming opposites of what they once were.  The elderly live for well over a century, but maintain their vitality and work the jobs […]

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One of the plot points in The Emissary is the fact that Japan is now an isolated country completely cut off from the rest of the world. As a result, it is unknown whether or not any outside countries have the ability to help any of the afflicted people of Japan. Japan is adamant that […]

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In the book The Emissary, the main characters live in a dystopian society in Japan. There are many aspects of this book that differ from typical dystopian novels. One of the more obvious differences between Yoko Tawada’s novel and other dystopian books is that the technology component is missing/severely limited in the communities. A common theme […]

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The Emissary is a short novel which focuses on Japan after a disaster strikes the country. This calamity has created an alternate universe, set far in the future, where children are so weak they are almost unable to walk, the elderly (who are healthier than the kids) having to look after them day by day. […]

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According to a book review on Words Without Borders, Yoko Tawada’s novel The Emissary is greatly inspired by Kenzaburo Oe’s Nobel Prize winning A Personal Matter. A Personal Matter is a semi-autobiographical novel about a man who has to come to terms with the birth of his mentally disabled son. Published in 1964, the novel […]

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“The law of gravity doesn’t forgive us. So hard to say I love you these days. I love you with urgency. I want to make a side. Without doubts. And without traps. To say I love you. Like that. Plainly.” In this day and age it feels harder to say “I love you” than it […]

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The voice mentions moments of beauty and joy that infuses the poem, as if to say that there can be unity and hope in journey that seem hopeless. “And the sky calm like sea when it sleep and a breeze like a laugh follow mi. Or the man find a stream that pure like a […]

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In reading Lorna Goodison’s poetry, I found that the Jamaican female experience is present throughout most of the pieces. I really enjoyed the way she took her own experiences and observations and translated them into poetry in a way that feels visceral and emotionally complex. One of my favorite poems from the selections is “Birth […]

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There were numerous interesting differences between Goodison’s poems, specifically “The Road of the Dread” and “Songs of the Sweet Fruits of Childhood.” After reading about Lorna Goodison, it is clear to see where she got her inspiration from in the stylistic and linguistic differences presented in the poems. The most noticeable difference between these poems […]

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From reading these poems selected, I found a common theme I found is her use of food/drink to convey a meaning. (?) The first poem I am going to discuss is “From the Garden of the Women Once Fallen.” I find her use of wording haunting as she conveys the image of a woman feeling […]

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Lorna Goodison’s “Songs of the Fruits and Sweets of Childhood” is undeniably lovely in its language and tone of nostalgia. The first stanza, which reads, O small and squat with thin tough skin containing the slick flesh of mackafat which makes fillings like putty between the teeth. immediately grabbed my attention. I had to google […]

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In her collection of poems, Lorna Goodison makes the writing audible. Indeed, she writes in English which is the language spoken in her country, Jamaica but uses the one that is spoken in Jamaica and that is different from the one from the United States for example. This makes her style very recognizable but also […]

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The poems by Lorna Goodison are different than the poems we have read by other poets. Not only are they different in theme, but the author chose to write in an accent, which is not a style found often. This distracts the reader, but it brings an interesting point of view for the characters. It […]

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Much of Lorna Goodison’s poetry is about the familiar. It is about her home and her culture, it is about food and tradition. Goodison immerses the reader in her world using several techniques. In “The Road of the Dread,” Goodison uses dialect. This is a clever tool that puts the reader in Jamaica without Goodison spelling it […]

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The selected poems we read by Lorna Goodison are fascinating in their contrast. “The Road of the Dread,” for example, is vastly different than any of Goodison’s other poems because it is written with phonetic spelling in the dialect of her native Jamaica. And look no fi no milepost fi measure you walking and no […]

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“Songs of the Fruits and Sweets of Childhood” is by far one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. Goodison’s prose is unbelievably lovely, each stanza so superbly written that they could be poems of their own: Cream pink pomander Like a lady’s sachet Is the genteel roseapple Scenting the breath.   Jade […]

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I interpreted Maria Elena Cruz Varela’s poem “Love Song for Difficult Times” not as a poem addressed to a person, but to her country. As can be read in the biography listed before the poems, Cruz Varela was beaten and imprisoned for publishing a manifest against the Castro regime. She wrote, “Here I am: forty-one […]

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What makes this novel so fascinating is the backstory of the two main characters, and their experiences in the present tense. My first impression of Huda was that she is very timid and nervous, not the type of woman who would have any sort of sexual adventures whilst on holiday. When Yvonne was flirting with […]

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I didn’t appreciate this novel as much as I hoped I would due to the title. While I do agree with other blog posts that this is supposed to be a novel about two liberated women overcoming hardships and pursuing their careers, I don’t this book is as feminist as it should be. I think […]

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Yvonne hurries over to introduce herself to the young Arab man, thinking to herself young Arab men don’t bother withdrawing before they come, relying on women to take precautions. In her book, Hanan al-Shaykh depicts two women with different backgrounds. Indeed, Yvonne is a European, lives in London and she is thirty-seven. Huda is a […]

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