Author: Kendra Winchester

“You already know the story. You will die. Everyone you love will also die. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time.” 

This is how Emily Wilson ends her introduction to her translation of The Iliad. Her words speak the universal qualities that have made The Iliad the classic as we know it today. But how it’s been translated in the past, that’s another story.

I was first introduced to Emily Wilson’s work with her translation of The Odyssey, which was the first translation of The Odyssey outside of academia. Her work on The Odyssey has stayed with me through the years, so of course, when I saw she had a translation of The Iliad coming out this fall, I had to get my hands on it.

While Wilson is not the first woman to translate The Iliad, she still brings a unique perspective to the work. Her Iliad is sweeping, poetic, and incredibly vibrant. The fates of gods and men war both on the ground and in the heavens above. Men weep. Women fall silent with terror at the future they know is inevitable.

In Wilson’s translator’s note in the beginning, she describes how The Iliad was intended to be performed out loud, and she strived to ensure that the English edition maintained that same musical quality in its sound and rhythm. This is even more apparent in the audiobook, which is performed by Audra McDonald, one of the most decorated stage actors of our time. McDonald’s performance is magnificent. While I listened, I felt as if I was experiencing The Iliad as it was meant to be. McDonald creates a truly incredible listening experience, one I will definitely be revisiting again.

Megan Kamalei Kakimoto’s new collection, Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare, is a multifaceted look at what it’s like to be Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). Of mixed Japanese and Native Hawaiian ancestry, Kakimoto’s stories examine the lives of the Indigenous women from the islands of Hawai’i. 

In “Aiko, the Writer,” a queer writer is on a writer’s panel on the continent, fully aware that the conference is less interested in her work and really just wants her to check an Indigenous diversity box. As she attends the conference, she grapples with whether or not she should write about some closed cultural practices from her community. Does she share these ideas with the world to benefit her career, or does she respect her cultural heritage?

“The Love and Decline of the Corpse Flower” features a woman whose partner has died, but a woman who looks strikingly similar is growing out of a corpse flower. In “Touch Me Like One of Your Island Girls: A Love Story,” a woman struggling financially answers an ad for a Native Hawaiian woman to star in adult films for white men. In “Hotel Molokai,” a teenage girl is taken to a secret location by her grandmother—against her mother’s wishes—to participate in a ceremony that signifies her new womanhood.

Each of Kakimoto’s stories centers around different ideas of Indigeneity in the face of ongoing colonialism. These women and girls are making their way in the world, defining for themselves what it means to be Kānaka Maoli. There is no singular answer, and each person works through their ideas, deciding their futures for themselves.

Kakimoto uses elements of fabulism in her storytelling, reminding me of other queer writers, like K-Ming Chang, who use qualities of folklore and fables in their fiction. Each tale is a unique gem, perfectly polished. Her messy, complex protagonists are fully formed and glorious. I could go on, but it’s safe to say that Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare is one of my favorite books of the year.

A few years ago, I watched the first season of HBO’s Gentleman Jack, a fictionalized mini-series of the very real character of Anne Lister, one of Britain’s most famous lesbians from the early 19th century. Gentleman Jack’s Lister is a brash risk taker and a bit of a rake. But her charisma and pure magnetism capture viewers’ attention.

Emma Donoghue’s Anne Lister is 15 and at boarding school, still gangly and awkward, unsure of herself. But Learned By Heart is told from the perspective of 14-year-old Eliza Raine, a biracial girl with a British father and an Indian mother. Eliza and Lister are thrown together when they are assigned to a room together. Lister is strange to Eliza. She is well-read, cheeky, and unladylike. Eliza feels a pull towards Lister while simultaneously suspecting Lister might become her downfall.

Learned By Heart captures your attention from its first pages, drawing you into the world of two teenage girls. Their school is strict, demanding the utmost obedience displayed through a meek acceptance of authority. But before she even realizes that it’s possible, Eliza has fallen in love with Lister. There’s so much pining and teenage angst. Through Eliza’s eyes, we see what draws her to Lister. Like Eliza, Lister possesses an otherness that sets her apart from the other girls. And before long, Eliza and Lister are smitten, taking more and more risks with their secret relationship.

Donoghue shines brightest in her historical fiction. In her author’s note, she describes the elements of Eliza’s story that she fictionalized, the gaps in the historical record, and what really happened to Eliza after the end of the novel. As Anne Lister’s famous journals (of over five million words) gain more notoriety, Donoghue describes how she felt drawn to Eliza and wanted to highlight a woman she felt was given short shrift.

Like so many great novels, this one seems to take place at the end of the world. An environmental disaster has caused smog to cover much of the planet, killing off most of the crops and animals. Our unnamed protagonist, an Asian American chef living in Europe, finds herself in a dead-end job working with the limited ingredients left to the general populace.

Deciding she really has nothing better to do, the chef takes a job working for a billionaire living in a compound on the top of a mountain in Italy. High above the smog, the chef cooks in a kitchen full of now-rare ingredients like butter, strawberries, avocados, and chocolate. Aida, the billionaire’s genius daughter, heads up the research to preserve species dying off because of the smog. She also provides the chef with the rare ingredients that she’s been craving. Later, Aida shows her the lab and the hounds she’s been breeding. The chef can hardly believe her eyes.

Before long, the chef finds herself cooking for the richest people in the world, all of whom are being wined and dined by the billionaire and Aida in order to fund their research and planned move farther above the smog. The meals become more involved, more detailed, and more pageant-like. 

From the first few pages, I was smitten with the chef’s narrative voice. The way that she tells her story, carefully describing each ingredient she comes across, is mesmerizing. As the chef finds herself working with Aida, I began to feel the intense attraction that draws the two of them together. This novel centers these characters’ stories, their connection to food, and the simple enjoyments that make them human. I couldn’t help but hang on every word, desperate for them to stay together but also wanting the chef to run away as fast as she can.