August is #WITMonth: Women in Translation will feature all August long

August is W.I.T. Month!

This ten-year-old readfest is described on their website (linked above) as follows:
WITMonth—aka Women in Translation Month—is an annual celebration of women writers from around the world, writing in languages other than English. Started by Meytal Radzinski in 2014, WITMonth has grown to become a staple of the online literary community, as well as a prominent presence in independent bookstores around the world.

Every August, readers from all continents around the world (except Antarctica, but we’ll get those penguins yet!) gather in spirit (and sometimes in person) to read, review, and discuss works by women writers in translation. The idea is to spread the word about the Women in Translation project at large, and promote individual women writers in translation specifically. Follow #WITMonth on Twitter, Instagram, Booktube, and across the world!

The overarching purpose is one I support most of all because it is the opposite of the TERF essentialist and exclusionary mindset. A bit of history about their work, again from their website...

The #womenintranslation project is:

International, intersectional, and built around the notion that all women* (*and transgender and nonbinary and intersex individuals) deserve to have their voices heard. This project is committed to giving space to women* from all countries, all languages, all religions, all ethnicities, all cultures, all sexualities, all marginalized gender identities, all abilities, all bodies, all classes, and all ages.

Due to the stunning gender disparity in non-English language literature, this project will focus on all literature written by women* in any language other than English, regardless of the language in which it is read or discussed. This project shall not discriminate based on literary genre or designation, seeking instead to open as many gates as possible to all readers. This project is open to all readers, from all languages, from all countries, in the hopes that together we may build a better world.

This month I will focus on works written and/or translated into English by *women. My intention is to post twenty-one reviews, not including Burgoines and Pearl-Rules, in the thirty-one days of August. See the previous years' reviews, too.

I encourage all who love reading to join the fun...one book or ten, add some women's writing and translating to your TBR!
***
August is #WITMonth in Review

I wrote twenty-four reviews, Burgoines, and Pearl-Rules in August. I'd planned to make twenty-one full blog posts of #WITMonth reads, and failed, making thirteen full-blown reviews. My excuse is what my LT friend Katie calls "The Rona" bashed me for several days...though that might be a self-misdiagnosis. The pharmacist who shot me up with my vaccines yesterday said the profile I described sounded more like the onset and course of RSV.

Anyway, I'm all jabbed up and really don't want any re/visits from anything, thenkewveddymahch.

My favorite read of the month was, hands down, Hum by Helen Phillips. Excellent, thought-provoking story of how humans will always screw up inhuman systems because what programmers call "edge cases" actually make up the bulk of human life. I was gripped, beginning to end.

The most enjoyed #WITMonth read was the estimable Of Saints and Miracles, translated ably from its Spanish edition by Claire Wadie. I absolutely rang like a newly-founded bell with its story of betrayal for gain. Not the cheeriest story, permaybehaps, but one I think we can all feel in our water.

September will be themeless as I ramp up for #Deathtober and #Booksgiving. It's all the more urgent to me that I not die before those themes are polished and properly posted because my notes say some pretty scathing things and need toning down for public consumption.