Contemporary Translated Works - A Last Supper of Queer Apostles (Conversation with Gwendolyn Harper)

Gwindelyn Harper is the translator and editor of Pedro Lemabel's A Last Supper of Queer Apostles, published by Penguin Classics in 2024, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and holds degrees from both Yale and Brown University. Her translations and essays have appeared in poetry, the Paris Review Daily, N Plus1, Latin American Literature Today, and Two Lines Journal, among other publications. So, Gwen, um I just read your biography, um your professional biography, but we might want to like learn about who you are through, um the lens of language, your linguistic autobiography. How might our audience today understand and know who you are through the lens of language? Um, well, I would say that um I really began, funnily enough, my first second language was not Spanish. It was actually um Mandarin Chinese. And um I grew up in the Bay Area. I don't know how many people are actually joining us from the Bay Area, but I know that the Mechanics Institute is a big Bay Area based institution. Um, and so growing up in the Bay Area, it's not so uncommon that your your sort of school language is is Mandarin. And so, um, and then another option at the school where I attended was Japanese. And so I think I had this sense of um language being a little bit relative you know like there like there were just different languages and um that even the kind of it was this immersion school so there was also a certain amount where the Japanese and Chinese speaking students we almost kind of couldn't communicate with each other fully or we had you know there were sort of all these kind of crisscrossing things that were going on from very early on. Um, and so and and I liked um I think I always I also just really liked people and being with people and so the idea that language sort of enabled connection um was always very appealing to me. So then I started learning Spanish in high school and was actually quite um po not very good at it in in a way and that kind of determination to figure out what Spanish was and I think it's Spanish is on the surface a very quote unquote simple language and I think that's actually quite kind of politicized assumption but it's really in the kind of incredible variety of Spanish and incredible variety of slang and Um, and it's also in some ways quite a formal language, in other ways, um, I think that just kind of continued to unfold in interest. And I think Chile, where I ended up, um, spending quite a bit of time, um, in my 20s, is a really good example of a Spanish that is actually like quite elaborated um, in an informal way. And so I ended up being really really interested in that. And then this book was a really um wonderful way of uh sort of de demonstrating my continual interest in that aspect of language. And can you tell me about how you came to translate this collection of essays? What drew you to Pedro Limabel's works? Um, I would say that I I had initially gone to Chile to translate another wonderful um, Latin American writer, a Chilean writer, Lena Marwani. Um, and I, Leml had passed away um, not long before I arrived in Chile. And so there was really kind of a public appreciation of his work and, you know, evaluation of his work going on. um he was quite a um quite sort of a folk hero um in Chile. And um so so then when I started I think one of the best ways to figure out works that are worth translating is actually to ask wide a wide range of people about the books that have really stuck with them, not just sort of quote unquote literary types. And I was really struck by the fact that um Leamell seemed to emerge almost no matter who I talked to. Like I um would talk to, you know, yeah, sure, the literati of the world and they would say, "Oh, Levelville." But I would also talk to like my friend's grandma in the provinces and she would say, "Oh, Levelville." you know, and then I would talk to, you know, some someone at 2 am in this club and they would be like, "Yeah, Lemville." Yeah. So, so it just I was struck by the um breadth of interest, like the breadth of people who connected with him and then also when I actually read him, I was struck by how difficult he was in a way. And so that kind of combination of of almost avantguard use of language combined with that sense of immediacy um that people really connected with. Um I I found that to be a really rare combination and that really m was important to me. Thank you for sharing that Gwen. And um I wanted to talk a little bit about the title that you chose for this collection of essays. Um folks can find it actually on page um 94. It's located in the story a night of first. What was the process of finding that title? How did you come across and decide that that would be the title of this collection of essays or chronicus? Um I think it was the editor, the penguin editor John Siciliano's idea. Um I think the collection was initially shopped around by the agent as Wild Desire which is you know a translation of um Loqua which is the title essay in one of Leavell's original collections. Um and I you know the translation initial the initial translation of that line was um actually used a word I won't use here but it was the f word in and so the it was in in in gay terms I mean and so it was like a very strong choice actually and um and So, there was actually really a lot of debate about whether we should use this really uh intense kind of the most intense slur we could come up with in this um in this title. And I and we considered some softer things like I I was kind of interested in um a million names of Maria Chameleon being the title, which is the title of another um essay. Um, but that seemed a little bit kind of like I don't know like a little too Oh, look. Sorry about all the that always happens in my screen. Um, that seemed a little bit too like Latin American boom or Gabrielle Garcia Marquez to me in a way that didn't actually reflect it wasn't actually specific to Lemville. It was a little bit kind of broadly exoticizing. Um and so we we decided to go with a last supper of slur apostles. Um and then there was a lot of debate among various people involved about what the best word for that would be. And you know some of us myself included thought that we should kind of keep it as strongly as possible. But it was it was really a tough choice because it was also like who do we want to be able to actually like say the title out loud? Like do we want it to be I don't know. I remember saying the strongest version of the title to a couple at a wedding. I was I I was at a wedding while we were sort of this we were discussing this and I remember them a couple a lesbian couple kind of kind of you know Gen X and I remember them looking really kind of wounded and I remember thinking oh you know some some people are not going to hear that in this kind of kind of retaking way. And so we ultimately um opted for this softer kind of queer umbrella term. And um I I think it was actually a really good decision. It was actually a really big lesson for me on come on kind of how we how just a group of people kind of come together in within publishing and kind of find the best solution. And um I think it's it's it's served us it's served us well and most importantly it's ser served Level well and gotten people excited about about the book. So I'm really happy about it. Well, thank you for sharing that and we would also love to just hear your translation like kind of your your your oral sort of delivery of your translation. So would you mind sharing with us a short reading from the collection of Monica's? Yes. And um in case we want to follow along, if you can share with us the page number as well, that would be amazing. Of course, I'm going to read Night at the Circus um and it's page 67. I think I can confirm that it's 67. Yes. Um and yeah, it's just about two two and a bit pages. So, I'll just read the whole thing if that's okay. All right. Night at the Sergus. According to my dear Amiga Andre Pave, who just passed away, this happened to a loca who was always cruising the streets for a bit of dirty dancing, who one September evening ignored the terrifying curfew that our oxygenarian fatherland had set. Ah, those dictatorship Septembers full of holidays and commemorations and barricades and glorious protests under repression strain skies. But our loca never let a little political unrest get the better of her. Especially on that particular day when gathering her savings, she went out to buy a pair of those fancy brandame sneakers she'd been dreaming of, which cost as much as an eye from your face. But it was a luxury she could give herself, walking real posh from Central Station on down at the cusp of national paralysis, the hour when everything in the country froze. The perfect hour for catching a weward macho for a rub down in some empty lot. And she walked springy in her shiny Adidas as people ran past, catching the last bus home by by the seat of their pants. She strolled fresh in her winged Adidas as people hurried along, neurotically checking the times. Santiago turned tough once the streets emptied out, and the only sound after dark was the screech of police sirens making the city's heart race. In those days, certain ladybirds hungry for asbuck express like to comb this Santiago, set on edge by curfew in search of fresh semen. And that was part of the challenge, the dangerous loitering, snagging something right before time was up. Well, the loca in her spanking Adidas drifted down the Alamita on the west side, unable to find anything. Not a single soul she could squint at in the night's hairy silence. But a ways off, near General Velasquez, she could see strings of shining lights announcing that the big circus had come to town, as they always do during the holidays, pitching their tents on the empty land by that central street corner. And so the loca steered herself that way, pulled by the glowing signs, and arriving found only more endless solitude with just 5 minutes to go before curfew. Got a cigarette? She was startled by the gruff voice of the circus hand who guarded the tents. "Oof, finally something," sighed the loca in relief. And then, by the light of the match, she caught a lusty glint in the macho man's eyes, and without any chitchat, he lifted the door on the canvas tent where he slept on a field cot. His foldable bed was the only thing there. "And why bother with more?" thought the loca, untieing her gorgeous Adidas, which she placed delicately on the floor. Then she surrendered to the orangutang clamor of this man who ate her alive, skewering her again and again with his circus tent pull. Such frenzied sexual contortions wore the mighty man out, who having gotten it out of his system, immediately began to snore. "That's it," the locust said to herself, silently getting off the cop to look for her spanking Adidas in the dark. and she looked and she looked, groping under the bed, but couldn't find even a trace of her footwear. Then she realized the tent was a bit short and didn't reach the ground, and that if someone had seen the shoes from outside, they'd only have to stretch out a hand while she was busy with sodomite combustion. It certainly was a tragedy to have lost her flawless Adidas, but it was even worse to have h have to leave after curfew in the wee hours of the morning with bare paws. Snooping around under the bed, she thought, "There's got to be something around here, something I could wear, even just old flipflops." And then she felt something like her sneakers, but so big. and pulling them out, she found herself with a pair of enormous clown shoes. "Well, what can you do?" she said, strapping the pointy boats on her queenly little paws. Being very careful, she went outside, shuffling along until she reached the circus entrance, where she hid behind a sign for a while after hearing a patrol car's motor. When the silence returned, she dashed across the Almeida, conking like a stampede of circus animals. She stopped behind a tree on the other side of the street, waiting until the echoes of her sprint had faded away. And so the loca went, clowning into the night, from tree to tree, running and stamping, hiding and trembling as she crossed the besieged city with her heart in her hands and her dirty little bum leaking onto the dictatorship's gloomy streets. Thank you so much for that reading, Gwen. Um, I just wanted to remind folks that if you have any questions that are emerging, do add it to our chat box and we'll try to get to that as our Q&A begins. Um, Gwen, there's a word that emerges for me in what you just read. In the first paragraph, the word loca appears and in the last, the word loca appears as well. And I wanted to just talk about that translation choice. How did you decide to sort of maintain the original word in that story and throughout actually the entire um collection of chronic? Yeah. And and I should maybe just give a little bit more context for anyone who didn't get a chance to read um that this loca figure is this very central the the idea of a loca is a very central idea in the book. Um, and a loca is um someone who's a born male and then uh ends up really I feel like you could use we don't now I think you would most locas would identify as trans but it was sort of before the trans movement in the US and so um there they were often identified as transvestites or um and often worked as as sex workers in the 70s and 80s in in Santiago. And so that is who the the character of this particular story is. Um Aloca and um so the choice to use Loca was really because um I see a question coming in. Um, the the choice to use loca was really because I didn't think that trans was quite the right word in part because it's just a different history and um, Level himself really wanted to push back against sort of USbased terminology um, for sort sexual and gender difference. Um um and so it felt important to to resp and and also because it's there there was both the cultural aspect and the historical aspect like I think Levelville also figured that um felt that the loca that he knew was going to disappear. um as the world became more global and more homogeneous and I think that there's real a deep truth and preience to that um like he associated the loca not only with the feminine but also with the indigenous and with like the provincial even as even if they were in cities um as opposed to this kind of um hyper masculine kind of cosmop um and money cosmopolitanism. And so I I just really felt like respecting all of those choices and pushing back against maybe some US assumptions about who was trans and what trans meant um was important. And I felt like Loca was was a kind of um Idra Novi who wrote the introduction um we talked about it as almost a kind of incantation of kind of raising these figures um that um that it would take on in that repetition a kind of life. they would they would take on life again even though many of these most of the people that leav describes passed away from the AIDS crisis. So yeah, I mean through through the reading of the chronicas, I got a sense that the loca was a retaking of sort of societal sort of um expectations of gender and also just calling people other crazy, right? Loca literally means crazy, right? But but I think they retake it in a very very endearing and community building way. And that helps us transition to Henry's question, which is do you think that this trans umbrella has helped more or harmed? and he's thinking about the more nuanced cultural institutions around the world such as um 2S in the indigenous Americas. Um Henry, you might have to explain that a little bit. And also lady boy in uh in Thailand, these these other terminologies. Okay. So yeah. Um I mean I think I don't know. I think maybe that kind of is a question you almost whether it's helped more or harmed is almost a question you have to um ask um community by consider community by community. I'm not sure if it's you can say consistently across the board. I mean, I feel like in I I think in Argentina and in Chile, it's been mostly positive because it's given the kind of political class, I guess, for lack of a better word, sort of this globally accepted way of thinking about some people who have been kind of in the lowest parts of society for a really long time and kind of thinking I there there's there's an raification is too strong a word but it's almost like the rest of the world is suddenly taking this kind of person seriously. Um, and and and yet the this it can be there's often a really big gap between the politics in Chile and Argentina around trans rights and then what the statistics actually are. Um, so I was talking with a a new friend of mine um Diana and I'm not sure I'm going to pronounce her last name right. It's like Guts or Got who wrote this book um this body I wore who's yeah wonderful writer about the trans experience and she was talking about how she had gone to um a school a high school in Argentina that was for only for trans students um and um how there was kind of an incredible array of resources in some ways at the school but that the stat the statistics in terms of trans in terms of you know their their actual outcomes and uh disease and um you know trans femicides and stuff were were still really really high. So thank you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I I was um Yeah, I always kind of think of that for like pros and cons because I know in the trans community there's a lot of almost likeions as well for like many other nuanced things and then when you add all these layers of around the world and their like specificities um I think it can be really difficult. Um because I I also think of just like the political term of like Asian-American was kind of invented to create a coalition, a political coalition for an entire continent, right? That obviously has lots of different cultures and all of that, but then there almost becomes like a hierarchy within it where some voices are louder than others, some are better off like class-wise, and they just think, you know, everyone's suddenly a model minority when like is very very not the case. there's a lot of diversity within a label. So I was just wondering your your perspective of on the one hand maybe it's more legible to people like in a global way but on the other hand like what is being missed out from the loca experience compared to you know those around the world. Right. Right. Um, I think I think that's those are all really great points and I think it's that's actually such an interesting thing to consider about the Asian-American experience specifically. Um, I, you know, it's funny. I don't think I don't think the I don't think people who are gender queer in Chile have kind of any problem with it, which probably makes sense. They're like, "Yeah, I'm trans. I'm also a loca." Like, whatever. Like, these don't have to totally align in every moment um of my life. And then um I think maybe I so I guess the question is more about almost US or institutional perception of these people or whether they get kind of brought under an umbrella as token or um and Yeah, I I don't again I don't think there's kind of like a a single answer to that. Like I can think of examples where it's been like the umbrella term has kind of allowed for nuance and I can think of examples when it's where when the um I don't know when the sort of flattening makes for some assumptions that um don't seem so good. I mean, I mean, ultimately a story I tell in my introduction is that when when I find myself gatekeeping the exact nature of the term, I find myself ultimately doing more harm than good because I, you know, this is Liml trans or not? Like that's a hard thing to say. But in saying no, he's not trans. You can't claim this at all as like this thing you're connecting with. I find that to be a lost opportunity for readers who are trans or maybe thinking that they might be trans or like I I feel like ultimately to sort of academically gatekeep the exact point is um seems to kind of like risk kind of devaluing the reader um or kind of negating ating them in a way where ultimately it's kind of about them navigating the nuance as opposed to me saying like yes or yes or no and hopefully I've given them the toolbox to navigate it if if that makes sense. No, I love that. I think what you're speaking to is that the term trans in itself is polyimus, right? It has multiple meanings depending on the multiplicities of listeners. Um, so for some people trans still is in the binary buckets from male to female, but for some people it's about transformation, about going beyond the binary as well. And so I think what one really interesting story um when I think about Chinese, you mentioned Mandarin Chinese, is I remember when I was young, we would designate people as Zya, which means person monster, which I think is the most derogatory trans term ever. Wow. But then I think because of the recent um sort of um re shaping of language as we move into these movements that Lemabel was not you know privy to live into right h how do we describe someone who lived before these huge linguistic shifts as well and I think that that is a fascinating topic to be able to converse about um we are at noon so I just want to give Gwen a chance to just share with us any um interesting upcoming works that she might be working on before we transition into our informal discussion. Okay. Well, there I we there's one other thing I'd like to say which is just that the first person to publish anything that I translated of Lemville, George is here. And so just a shout out to George Henen in the audience. Hello. And my gratitude remains to him because he really kind of opened opened the door for this this whole project in ways that I could not have foreseen. So um thank you. Um and you were asking me about current projects. It's it's an open question a little bit. Uh it's turns out to be a little bit intimidating when you've had a project that's done so well to figure out exactly what you do next. Um, but I um I am I do have a novel project that I was about halfway through when I put the Leml um when I put it down to focus on the LEL translation. So, I'm hoping to go back to that. Um, and then there are um a couple of translation projects that I'm in an exploratory stage with. I won't say anything um when there are while there aren't rights and stuff um lined up but um some translation is is in the works too. Um thank you for sharing that. Great. And I remember you telling um us through your introduction that this took about seven years. Was that was it that long? Yeah, I mean that I was also working on fiction and and a novel during that time. So I would say maybe three and a half of those years or something. um or four where it's sort of the actual translating. But in terms of you know there's really translators really spend a lot of time like you know that there were multiple iterations in terms of who was really kind of in a decision-making position with the estate and who um and you know emailing p you know editors and publishers and getting the agent on board and getting grants and so all of that actually takes tons of time too. Um and I the whole process took yeah from 2016 to 2023. So hopefully next book is coming a little bit faster than that. Yeah. Well, we are blessed to have your you know um steadfast efforts over um a sevenyear time span. Um it might take us about 3 to four hours to get through the thing, but I just wanted to shout out the invisible work that goes into creating something like this. So um thank you so much for being here with us today for this conversation and um we'll now transition to our informal convers.