Growing up, I watched Golden Girls with my family. We enjoyed Sophia Petrillo's sensibilities, her spunkiness, and her flashbacks that were framed with one of television's best quotes: With that said, let's picture a golden age of technology where people—young, old, rich, poor, (please insert whatever and whoever you are)—with a clickety-clack-click-clackety of their finicky fingertips … Continue reading Diversity Illusionist Part 2: What Not to Write
Month: January 2020
Diversity Illusionist Part 1: Mirrors, Windows, and Other Worlds
First things first. I tried to be succinct! Epic Fail. Apologies! So, what started as a quick response, ended up being almost 2200 words. And then that rolled over into more. Part 2 will be available in a couple of days. ********* Earlier this month another blogger, Raimey Gallant, discussed a not so Happily-Ever-After episode … Continue reading Diversity Illusionist Part 1: Mirrors, Windows, and Other Worlds
Even Racists Got the Blues
🙂
OK…I have to say that, most of the time, I feel a little bit sorry for people who make horrendous translation mistakes. This is not one of those times.
This pic came across my desk about nine months ago, and it may just be the worst example of a self-translation disaster I’ve ever seen.
In fact, it’s so bad, and so out of context, that most of my Irish-speaking friends had no idea what this person was trying to say with those three Irish words: “Gorm Chónaí Ábhar.” It’s beyond gibberish. It even took me a few minutes.
The sad thing is, in order to “get it,” you need to be familiar not only with the ways in which people make translation mistakes (which are legion), but also with a particularly unpleasant segment of U.S. politics.
What this person was trying to say, with this mess of…
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Nathalie Joachim Wants to “Give Voice to the Beauty [. . .]” of Haiti
Tonya Mosley (WBUR) writes that “Grammy-Nominated Nathalie Joachim Wants to ‘Give Voice to the Beauty That Is Not Often Shown’ in Haiti.” [See previous posts Nathalie Joachim’s “Fanm d’ Ayiti” and A Haitian Music Oral History that Bends Space and Time.]
Haitian American flutist, vocalist and composer Nathalie Joachim‘s first featured solo album “Fanm d’Ayiti” has earned her a Grammy nomination for Best World Music Album. “Fanm d’Ayiti” — which translates to “Women of Haiti” — celebrates her Haitian heritage and serves to highlight some of the country’s unrecognized female artists.
Joachim says the Grammy nomination — “a dream come true” — makes her feel proud to represent her country through music. The album was her first solo project and one that she poured herself into.
Producing “Fanm d’Ayiti” was the “first time that I’m sort of stepping into myself as an artist, really…
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The 2 kinds of diversity advocates in publishing
This is an incredibly informative post that succinctly summarized a terribly troublesome issue inside (deliberate alliteration usage on crack) the not always Happily Ever After literary world or Romancelandia. I’m wondering if there is a third kind of diversity advocate (however it may be a watered version of both — a hybrid mayhaps?) and I look forward to writing a blog post about that. Thank you, Raimey! 🙂
You might have noticed that a 9,000-member literary organization has been in the news since it wrongfully censured author Courtney Milan on December 23, 2019. That organization is the Romance Writers of America, and you can find the most thorough chronology of events in Claire Ryan’s The Implosion of RWA. I’m a member and a white woman, and I am still watching as other members who are also white women, over and over again, refuse to believe women of color.
Since the moment news of the wrongful censure dropped, women of color have been showing membership what ethical behavior looks like, with Black women in particular initiating actions and carrying them out. They effected the reversal of the censure, resigned en masse from leadership positions, wrote petitions with 1,000+ signatories that resulted in the resignations of those in breach of fiduciary duties, and together with the LGBTQ+ romance community…
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Happy New Year 2020, Indeed!
Wow, wow! Incredible. We're already fifteen days into this new year and decade. 🙂 Yeah yeah, time is indeed relative, but I feel like the days are just gliding by! In between working and other responsibilities, I finally had the pleasure to sit down and organize a little something I call my Writer's Binder. I … Continue reading Happy New Year 2020, Indeed!
Rejection: A Writer’s Rite of Passage
Happy New Year 2020.
by Monique Hall
Nearly five weeks ago, I battled nerves and self-doubt but finally managed to hit send on my manuscript submissions to the editors I pitched to at the RWA Conference at the end of August. A few days after that, I participated in a Twitter pitch contest—an attempt to pitch your manuscript in 140 characters, not an easy task I might add!
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Monique L. Desir 