AUGUST WAS #WITMONTH...NOW IT'S SEPTEMBER, NATIONAL TRANSLATION MONTH

AUGUST 2025 was a very satisfying #WITMonth! My goal was writing at least 30 reviews of works translated by, or written by and then translated, from women the world around sourced from the DRC aggregators.

End of celebration report: thirty-two (32) posted, two ahead of my goal. As is always true, searching the tag "#WITMonth" on the blog, by clicking it at the bottom of this entry or by entering the text in the search box, will give you all the entries so tagged. You can also click right here.

There were standout reads, of course; fewer than I would've preferred, but including a strong contender for my 2025 six-stars-of-five accolade is The Remembered Soldier, a Dutch Great-War story of identity, of need and longing and love you can't imagine life without, all so precisely, sharply even, wrapped in that wooliest of media: Memory. There is nothing in any of that warbling of joy to detract from the amazing non-fiction work (So What) If I'm a Puta that tells the own-voices stories of transfem sex workers in Brazil. Transfem folk are at the highest risk imaginable for femicide. It's a tough, bleak read, but it left me fully aware of how easy it is for transphobic...people...to do their ugly, hateful work without knowing a fraction of the cost others must pay for it.

I'm delighted that August is going out on the happy note of a lovely stretch of just-right days with sun, breeze, not-hot not-cold temperatures, not-too-humid (I live on the beach, humid gonna happen) air. It's like it was before climate change really began biting us.

So, September is #NationalTranslationMonth, which I'll be leaning into for my reviewing. I'll include women's translations as new ones pop up, hashtagging with both #NationalTranslationMonth and #WITMonth to be sure they're discoverable from every abgle. It won't be as focused a push, but will definitely be noticeable. No goals set so I'm not pressuring myself to accomplish something; I'll just be taking extra note of a book's origins.

And with that, I'll wish global-northerners a happy incoming fall and global-southerners the same for spring! Excellent reading mojo for all, of course.