Irma Pineda, translated by Wendy Call

In the Belly of Night and Other Poems, the stunning U.S. debut by Indigenous Mexican poet Irma Pineda, is a trilingual edition richly illustrated by Chilean artist Natalia Gurovich and elegantly translated to English by Seattle-based author Wendy Call.

PRAISE

"Irma Pineda's poems and Wendy Call's translations evoke tragedy, and celebrate the ways in which the human is built from dream, tradition, and nature. Self-translated as 'mirror-poems' by Pineda, from Isthmus Zapotec into Spanish, and then translated into English through a complex process that is fascinatingly articulated by Call, the trilingual poems in this collection show us how translation serves as a means for cultural preservation and political resistance to the forces that seek to criminalize languages or dangerously render them extinct. In these poems, rivers have disappeared into deserts, the dead are honored and celebrated, language transforms pain into meaning, memory, and light." —Daniel Borzutzky, winner of the National Book Award for Poetry (USA)

Review at Latin American Literature Today

Poetry, Isthmus Zapotec, Spanish & English

Publication date: July 22, 2021

ISBN: 979-8986353913

Format: Softcover, 160 pages,