Smarty Pants

Restless Books devotes itself to publishing books you don’t usually find in English—from Cuban science fiction and illustrated retellings of the Ramayana to doorstopper Hungarian novels. Its catalog features classics, like Don Quixote and The Souls of Black Folk, new immigrant writing from Abu Dhabi, and the mind-boggling prose of Chilean-French novelist Alejandro Jodorowsky. Only three percent of books published in English are in translation, most from European languages. So what does it take to transform a book from one language to another? To answer that question, Ilan Stavans and Joshua Ellison, co-founders of Restless Books, give us a crash course in Publishing 101.Go beyond the episode:Peruse the growing list of titles in the Restless Books catalogueRead an excerpt from Andrés Neuman’s How to Travel Without Seeing, his memoir of a whirlwind trip to every country in Latin America, and from Githa Hariharan’s Almost Home, a collection of essays about finding a place in the world when you’re not exactly from a single placeListen to our interview with Naivo, author of Beyond the Rice Fields (the first Malagasy novel ever translated into English) and his translator, Allison CharetteCheck out the University of Rochester’s Three Percent project, which frequently reviews new books in translationRead new stories in translation (including bilingual versions!) on Words Without Borders, the online magazine for international literatureCross a prizewinner off your reading list by exploring the Man Booker International PrizeTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few people have read the Hebrew Bible all the way through—maybe you memorized a portion for your bar or bat mitzvah, or read parts of it in Sunday school or a college course. But the whole thing? Hardly. Fewer people still have read it as a work of literature, treating every sentence as an expression of literary style. Even fewer have read the Bible all the way through in the original language, gotten frustrated with available English translations, and then decided to blaze ahead with their own. One such person is award-winning translator and literary critic Robert Alter, who between books of literary criticism on the modern novel has been translating the Hebrew Bible for more than two decades. Last year, he finished: all 24 books of the Bible—a three-volume set weighing 10 pounds and three ounces. Go beyond the episode:Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible, and his follow-up, The Art of Bible TranslationHis Ten Commandments for Bible Translators:Thou shalt not make translation an explanation of the original, for the Hebrew writer abhorreth all explanation.Thou shalt not mangle the eloquent syntax of the original by seeking to modernize it.Though shalt not shamefully mingle linguistic registers.Thou shalt not multiply for thyself synonyms where the Hebrew wisely and pointedly uses repeated terms.Thou shalt not replace the expressive simplicity of the Hebrew prose with purportedly elegant language.Thou shalt not betray the fine compactness of biblical poetry.Thou shalt not make the Bible sound as though it were written just yesterday, for this, too, is an abomination.Thou shalt diligently seek English counterparts for the word-play and sound-play of the Hebrew.Thou shalt show to readers the liveliness and subtlety of the dialogues.Thou shalt continually set before thee the precision and purposefulness of the word-choices in Hebrew.Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Women in wars on land and sea, whether queens or foot soldiers, rarely get their due—yet their lives are at least as interesting as their male counterparts’, not least because they had to leap through so many hoops to fight. Historian Pamela Toler wants us to know their names, and her new book, Women Warriors, is a global history covering everyone from the Trung sisters, who led an untrained, 80,000-strong Vietnamese army against the Chinese Empire, to Cheyenne warriors like Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who knocked General Custer off his horse. There are at least a hundred killer screenplay ideas lurking in the history books—if only we bothered to look.Go beyond the episode:Pamela D. Toler’s Women Warriors: An Unexpected HistoryRead an excerpt about the Russian First Women’s Battalion of DeathLearn about the lady pirates time forgot, including one who gave birth in the middle of a sea battle (and still won) and Cheng I Sao, who negotiated a sweet retirement package with the Chinese government when the Navy couldn’t take her outAnd meet Njinga, the West African queen who fended off the Portuguese (start at minute 21:30)Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lillian Smith was the most radical writer you’ve never heard of—a novelist, essayist, civil rights activist, and general bomb thrower, as Tracy Thompson describes her in “Southern Cassandra,” an essay from our Spring issue. Born in 1897, Smith grew up among what she called “the best people”—the wealthy, southern aristocracy—but she betrayed every value of her social class until the day she died in 1966. She pushed for immediate desegregation in an era when the notion made most white people balk, drew a straight, damning line between race and sex, and argued that there was no way to untangle the rationale of Jim Crow from the supposed need to protect the purity of white women. Nobody listened to her at the time. But as Thompson argues, maybe if we had we’d be a little better off.Go beyond the episode:Read Tracy Thompson’s essay, “Southern Cassandra”Watch the trailer for Breaking the Silence, a documentary about SmithVisit some of Smith’s haunts on the Southern Literary TrailCheck out Smith’s books: Strange Fruit, Killers of the Dream, How Am I to Be Heard, or for a taste of all three, A Lillian Smith ReaderTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wild, blossoming cherries are native to many diverse lands, from the British Isles and Norway to Morocco and Tunisia. But they’re most associated with Japan, where the sakura is the national flower. These days, though, you’ll find blossoming cherries everywhere, on practically every continent. For that, we must thank a lot of dedicated botanists, who braved world wars and long sea voyages—and endured repeated failures—to spread the sakura around the world. But there’s one naturalist in particular we can thank: Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram. Journalist Naoko Abe joins us on the podcast to share how this English eccentric saved some of Japan’s most iconic cherry blossoms—from the spectacular Great White Cherry to the pink Hokusai—from extinction.Go beyond the episode:Naoko Abe’s The Sakura ObsessionIf you’re in Washington, D.C., check out the National Cherry Blossom Festival. Peak bloom is now expected on April 1!The National Park Service created a map and a list of the cherry blossom varieties in the citySmithsonian’s list of the best places to see cherry blossoms around the worldCherry varieties discussed:Taihaku / Prunus serrulata taihaku / Great white cherrySomei-yoshino / Prunus x yedoensis / Tokyo cherryTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re exploring another overlooked angle of antebellum American history: how photography transformed the abolitionist movement—and in particular, how a photograph of one seven-year-old girl was used to gain a white audience's sympathy. Jessie Morgan-Owens, a photographer and a historian, has written a book about that little girl, Mary Mildred Williams: Girl in Black and White, so named for the tones of daguerreotype, and of Mary herself—who looked white, though she was born into slavery. The story of how Senator Charles Sumner used Mary to advance his antislavery cause tells us a lot about the politics of the 19th century.Go beyond the episode:Jessie Morgan-Owens’s Girl in Black and WhiteRead Frederick Douglass’s speech, “Pictures and Progress,” delivered in Boston in 1861, and the introduction to Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn Michelle Williams’s anthology of Douglass’s writing on photography (and if you’re feeling particularly brave, try parsing Douglass’s own manuscript at the Library of Congress)As the most photographed man of the 19th century, Douglass left behind a voluminous photographic record, collected in Picturing Frederick DouglassCheck out Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida for a French post-structuralist spin, or W. J. T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory for a contemporary take on visual representationSojourner Truth supported herself by selling cartes de visite, in which she’s pictured wearing an iconic white cap and shawl (which she probably knit herself, given that she spun 100 pounds of wool to buy her freedom)The Mirror of Race is an online collection of early photographs about race in America, including critical commentaryMorgan-Owens also edited the 2017 reissue of Mary Hayden Green Pike’s novel Ida May, about a girl whom Charles Sumner compared Mary Mildred WilliamsTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In her explosive new book, They Were Her Property, historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers corrects the record about white women slave owners in the American South, proving that slavery and its associated markets were far from the sole domain of men. Since women often inherited more slaves than land, they were deeply invested, in a social, moral, and an economic sense, in the trade of enslaved people. A white woman could cordon off her property from her husband’s in a prenuptial agreement, preserve her right to manage her own property, and fend off her husband’s debtors in court. She also ensured the continued reproduction of the institution by engaging in the market for wet-nurses, who were often coerced into serendipitous pregnancies through sexual violence, and whose breast-milk was then used to nurse white children. How does the power of women slave owners change our understanding of the relationship among gender, slavery, and capitalism in the 19th century? Why were these relationships obscured for so long? Go beyond the episode:Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers’s They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American SouthRead the interviews with formerly enslaved people collected by the WPA, in the Library of Congress’s thorough online archiveAnd explore the complicated relationship that historians have had with these testimoniesTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The concept of equality has been with us since the founding of the United States, and it's been revised and fought over and debated for about as long, from the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment to the culture wars and the legalization of same-sex marriage. But not every argument for equality that is brought up in a court of law goes well. In fact, equality arguments often backfire, ending up affirming inequality: Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu v. United States … or just last year, Trump v. Hawaii. Losing the battle in court for an abstract concept like equality has tangible consequences for people on the ground, from trans soldiers to Iranian kids seeking lifesaving medical treatment. But what if there’s a way to fight for equal treatment without sending current laws backsliding? American University law professor Robert Tsai joins us on the podcast to argue for what he calls “practical equality.”Go beyond the episode:Robert L. Tsai’s Practical Equality: Forging Justice in a Divided NationRead his essay on how another approach would be not only to broaden the variety of arguments, but also to expand the venues for those arguments.For a steamier episode on the law, check out our interview with Geoffrey R. Stone in the episode “Out of the Closet and Into the Courts”Listen to the More Perfect episode “The Imperfect Plaintiffs” about how certain cases—like Plessy v. Ferguson—were manufactured by individuals to challenge existing lawFor another spin on how public action influences the courts, check out this interview with lawyer Darryl Li about the mass protests of the Muslim travel ban, as well as Barry Friedman’s The Will of the PeopleTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Sunday, Black Panther made history as the first superhero movie with a Best Picture Oscar nomination. And though it didn’t win that one, the film did win the most Oscars in the history of superhero movies. Given those historic firsts, and the inevitable onslaught of superhero movies that 2019 will bring, we're revisiting one of the first episodes from the podcast. Professor and comic book fan Ramzi Fawaz joined us to talk about origin stories, the X-Men, and what the queerness of the original mutant family can tell us about comic book heroes today.Go beyond the episode:Ramzi Fawaz's The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American ComicsRead his essays “Notes on Wonder Woman” and “The Difference a Mutant Makes”Watch the trailers for The New Mutants and Dark Phoenix, both coming out this summerRead the case that William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman, makes for superheroes—and “Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics”Check out our interview with lifelong nerd and critic A. D. Jameson on how geek culture entered the mainstream in the ultimate “Revenge of the Nerds”Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emily Bernard has offered her essays to The American Scholar since 2005, when we published “Teaching the N-Word.” She's written a lot of essays since then, essays that prove their etymology: the French word essayer—to try. She tries on different ways of thinking about what it means to be black, or the mother of daughters adopted from Ethiopia, or married to a white man, or the American daughter of a Trinidadian father. She joins us on the podcast to sort through the questions—and some of the answers—that form the heart of her new collection, Black Is the Body.Go beyond the episode:Emily Bernard’s Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and MineRead her essays in The American Scholar: “Teaching the N-Word,” “Interstates,” “Scar Tissue,” and a bonus from our archives about friendship, “Fired.”Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.