Compilers: Jessica Sequeira & Mónica Drouilly Hurtado (2025)
How can Asia be understood from Latin America?
In Playing with Mirrors: Essays on the Translation of Asian Cultures in Latin America, 26 translators, writers, editors, and other figures whose cultural work focuses on Asia respond to these questions in brief essays that reflect on their practice.
Their responses address topics ranging from the transformations of works in their different versions (for example, examining the case of Pablo de Rokha's poetry collection China Roja), to editorial decisions (for example, exploring the boom in Japanese literature), to the complexities of diasporas and their reception (for example, asking how Vietnamese reality in France translates to Chile), to cultural translations beyond the word (for example, thinking about the reception of music or Buddhism), to the ways books circulate (for example, analyzing the differences between large and independent publishers), to the omissions in our understanding of other parts of the world and possible directions for the future.
Entertaining, vital, and challenging, this book contributes new perspectives in an era of Asia's growing cultural importance in Latin America.
Contributors
Nicolás Braessas · Martín Felipe Castagnet · Marcela Chandía · Miguel Damatac · Mónica Drouilly Hurtado · Juan Elgueda · Ernesto González Barnert · Camila Gutiérrez · Banu Karakas · Pablo Lacroix · Claudia Lira ·María Montt · Ignacio Oliden · Felipe Orellana · Juan Luis Perelló · Miguel Ángel Petrecca · Alexsandro Pizziolo · Berenice Ramos · María Elvira Ríos · Jessica Sequeira · Elisa Silva · Juan Manuel Silva · Paulo Slachevsky . Anna Kazumi Stahl . Jose Miguel Vidal . Keke Wang