Editors’ Picks of 2016

‘Guapa’, by Saleem Haddad

Elishma Noel Khokhar, Nonfiction Editor

My motivations for reading Guapa were simple: it is the narrative of a non-western, LGBTQ protagonist, a young gay Muslim Arab man — Rasa — set against the backdrop of a failed political upheaval.

The story traces a single day in Rasa’s life, as he returns from the US after receiving his college education to find that nothing has changed politically or socio-culturally back home. This sense of knowing hopelessness pervades as post-uprising Rasa collaborates with friends to start a translation company for foreign journalists covering the ‘crisis’ in his country. Parallel to the political turmoil runs Rasa’s personal narrative. He ruminates over his father’s death and his deceased mother’s courage to subvert gender norms through her activist work in the slums of fictional town Al-Sharqiyeh. Rasa now lives with his authoritarian grandmother Teta, who has just seen him in bed with another man (Taymour). Rasa is searching for his activist friend Maj, the drag queen star of the underground bar called Guapa, who has just been arrested by the police.

The reader is skillfully roped into the fast-paced narrative, interwoven with Rasa’s double consciousness of performing everyday heterosexuality and leading a closeted existence. Rasa explores his inner conflict and sense of duty towards Teta through the concept of eib (shame): “The closest word for eib in English is perhaps ‘shame’. But eib is so much more than that. The implication of eib is kalam-il-nas, what will people say, and so the word carries an element of conscientiousness, a politeness brought about by a perceived sense of communal obligation”. Shame is a moral and social code that pre-ordains existence and therefore, the identity of a child before they even enter the world. It creates painful fissures for those on the margins leading lives in liminality.

Guapa’s literary weakness lies in the unnamed Arab country that the novel is situated in. In a recent interview, Haddad explains that this was a deliberate move to promote “inclusive solidarity” as opposed to dominant pan-Arabism. But it leaves his characters wanting. Where is Rasa from? How does Rasa contextualise his politics? Is his nationalism country specific? These questions remain unanswered.

‘Guardians of the Zone’, by TupperWare Remix Party 

Aaron Grierson, Contributing Editor

Tupperware Remix Party is a band hailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia (formerly of outer space) and they bring the 80s home in the hardest way. Did I mention that these guys wear costumes that they’ve never been seen without? They’re robo-aliens infecting Earth with positivity.

Probably best described as a funky electro-rock band, they seamlessly blend genres together with sweet sythns, mad bass and guitar solos, as well as the occasional keytar toss. ‘GotZ ‘ is TWRP’s fourth official album, with their third released in January 2015 and another EP due for release in a couple of months, they show no signs of slowing down.

The album itself is something of a more eclectic mix – some of the first songs have almost more of a chamber pop feel with the inclusion of organs, but the latter half brings out their true form. “Groove Crusaders” is perhaps the most quintessential song of the album, because it sounds like it could be the theme song for a cartoon from the 80’s. Every song, in its own way, is ripe with positivity and always upbeat, even when offering “Business Tips” for the aspiring employee.

‘Currently & Emotion’, edited by Sophie Collins

Katy Lewis Hood, Poetry Editor

2016 saw a boom in literature in translation, enabling a range of outstanding works to reach new audiences. However, such a rise is always in danger of obscuring the complexities of translation as medium and practice. ‘Currently & Emotion’ is a forceful, intelligent and stylish attempt to make translation visible.

The book itself is beautiful, with artwork by Canadian artist Stephanie Hier on the cover and bronze and red text inside. Right from the beginning, the visibility of translation is made political as well as aesthetic. “Currently, in 2016,” writes editor Sophie Collins in the introduction, “we are witnessing rapidly occurring and measurable changes in attitudes towards race, gender, and modes of representation.” Foregrounding work by writers not often included in anthologies – whether for reasons of race, gender, language, political orientation, or poetic style – and attending to the power dynamics of translation, Collins calls attention both to processes of cultural transmission, and to the practices that partake in, critique, and even transform them.

As well as an impressive range of poets and translators, the book features a variety of approaches to translation. Work is categorised as interlingual (translating from one language to another), intralingual (adapting a text within the same language), and intersemiotic (working between different artistic mediums), with some pieces incorporating all three types. Particular highlights include Chantal Wright’s experimental ‘translation-and-commentary’ of a German-language story by Yōko Tawada, Don Mee Choi’s forthright approach to the work of Korean poet Kim Hyesoon, and Khairani Barokka’s ’12 Acres’: an ‘accessible’ or ‘lateral’ translation of oral folk songs sung by women in an Indian village community into visual images.

At the end of 2016, finding means of border-crossing in language – of speaking but also listening to others, from the past as well as the present – is as urgent and necessary as ever. This anthology hints at the range of work already being done.

Braindead, created by Robert and Michelle King

Maryam Piracha, Editor-in-chief 

Braindead, while officially cancelled, is the show that really defined the year for me. Created by the Kings—Michelle and Robert—who also created the smart, sensible drama, The Good Wife that ended earlier this year in May. The premise is wild: bugs from outer space invade the minds of senate and congress making them more extreme in their views, and enforcing partisanship across both sides of the aisle. This premiered during election season in the US, at a time when Donald Trump was a shiny twinkle in God’s eye. But in an odd sort of way, his election is a nice bookend to the show.

With witty performances by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Mercy, Cloverfield Lane), Aaron Tveit (Graceland), Tony Shaloub, Danny Pino, Nikki M. James and Johnny Ray Gill, and a cast of other colourful characters, Braindead delivers an experience like no other in 2016. The hard to classify drama by The Good Wife creators and writing team, Michelle and Robert King, the show takes a satirical look at the current political climate in the US and offers one possible explanation as to why things are the way they are. The explanation, though outlandish (bugs invade DC from outer space and enter the heads of politicians and political evangelists, and eat one half of the brain), is a backdoor for the Kings to showcase the very weird, very antagonistic behaviour in a nation’s capital that paved the way for a Donald Trump presidency. It’s hard to pin down its genre, but it’s a romp and the performances are brilliant. The Kings join creators like Ali Adler, Joss Whedon (and Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon), along with Chris Carter and Greg Berlanti whose work I’ll gladly follow.

‘The Art of Rivalry’, by Sebastian Smee

Constance A. Dunn, Managing Editor

Smee’s new nonfiction follows four relationships between eight great master painters, from the beginnings of fond friendship, to mentorship, to the competitiveness that drove the creation of timeless masterpieces. The tragedy of ego plays out in these artists life, but so does poignant regret. Smee’s intimate details, well-researched and imparted with a fluidness only attained through years of study, turn the demigods Picasso, Matisse, Manet, Degas, Pollock, de Kooning, Freud, and Bacon into humans who loved, loss, had some success, but suffered along the way. These great masters, all of whom were able to transcend the trivial and mediocre on canvas, often struggled to find this same enlightened expression in their dealings with each other.

Rather than write the artists into little planets heedless of  the many moons orbiting around them, Smee reminds the reader of the remarkable context in which each artist worked. The women that played such vital roles in the creation of the artists’ masterpieces were not forgotten, nor were the collectors, curators, and tastemakers that introduced the world to their work. It is refreshing to be reminded that the creation of a great artist relies as much on the world he or she lives in, as on talent and skill.

Smee’s style is smart, engaging, and avoids the heaviness of academic speculation in favour of the quick clip of long-form editorial journalism.

‘You Want It Darker’, by Leonard Cohen 

Jacob Silkstone, Managing Editor

Perhaps appropriately, Edward Said left his collection of essays on ‘late style’ unfinished. Reshaped by Michael Wood, the volume — constructed around a course Said began teaching at Columbia shortly after being diagnosed with leukaemia — eventually appeared three years after the death of its author. Overturning “the accepted notion … that age confers a spirit of reconciliation and serenity”, Said was drawn to works of art that demonstrated “intransigence, difficulty and unresolved contradiction.” 

Leonard Cohen, Said’s near-contemporary, spent much of his career insisting that writing was enormously difficult. “I’ve often said,” he repeated in one of his final interviews, “if I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.” A week after the Swedish Academy chose to give Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”, the release of Cohen’s final album offered further evidence (if any were needed) in support of the argument that songwriting can be great literature.

Setting Cohen’s distinctive chthonic rasp against a minimalist background (acoustic guitar, violins, ominous but infrequent backing vocals from the Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue choir), ‘You Want it Darker’ often feels closer to spoken word poetry than to song. As a lyricist, Cohen is sometimes playful (“I struggled with some demons/ They were middle class and tame”), sometimes profound (“It seemed the better way/ When first I heard him speak/ Now it’s much too late/ To turn the other cheek”), but never content to settle for the easy option or the obvious answer.

Said wrote that Ibsen’s final works “tear apart his career and reopen questions that are supposed to have been resolved… tamper[ing] irrevocably with the possibility of closure.” In ‘You Want it Darker’, Cohen seems to veer between a desire for closure (particularly in the title song, which uses “I am ready, my Lord” as a haunting refrain) and a need to “tamper irrevocably” and reopen the age-old questions.

In his late interviews, Cohen expressed a readiness to die and a desire “to live for ever”. His final album embodies both sentiments, and revels in being unable to reconcile them.

‘Yiddish for Pirates’, by Gary Barwin

Aaron Grierson, Contributing Editor

A parrot is the central character, Moishe. The parrot is a polyglot narrator with a forthright sense of humour and a love of language, regardless of which. My namesake (or am I named after the Parrot?) weaves a tale that defies all expectation. The book is even equipped with several historical cameos including Christopher Columbus, that genocidal Italian that went around exploring in the name of Spain.

I picked up this novel on a whim, it had an intriguing title. There is a lot of swashbuckling, romance, contemplation and commentary on a breadth of social issues that are still, sadly, relevant today, including the absurdity of discrimination against socio-cultural groups (including, but not limited to, Jews and Native Americans). We also get a rather close examination of some of the inquiry methods preferred during the Spanish Inquisition, one of the main settings early in the novel.

But it’s not all blood, torture and hatred. Oh no, sometimes you’ll find it hard to contain your laughter. As a lover of wordplay I was taken with this novel. Admittedly, I did not understand all the play and had to resort to some google-fu. Calling the parrot a polyglot is a well-exercised fact. If you love languages, this book might be worthwhile for that reason alone.

Overall, this is a work of ‘popular’ fiction. I understand why it was a finalist for the Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. It’s a magically real historical fiction with a healthy sense of humour and the benefits of hindsight. It strikes me as a book even Mel Brooks would laugh at.

Planet Earth II, a sequel to Planet Earth produced by the BBC

Elizabeth Lee Reynolds, Nonfiction Editor

The arrival of Planet Earth II on our TV screens was a monumental event. Once again the charming and irreplaceable David Attenborough delighted viewers with insights into the natural world that would surprise even those who have devoured his previous work and thought themselves an expert. Of course, as Planet Earth shows, there is far too much left to discover about the world for one person to know it all. By presenting each episode focused on a different landscape the true diversity of the world was made apparent. We saw how the desert is in no way confined to the Sahara, how varied what we consider to be a forest can be, and even how wide the range of wildlife in our cities is.

The filming techniques allowed us to get even closer to the lives of incredible creatures, from snow leopards and city-stalking leopards to a harvest mouse and minuscule frog. When I was younger I used to always switch off when the ‘Diaries’ section was shown at the end but I know find it fascinating to see the dedication and years of work put in to bring us maybe five minutes of footage, where often the most basic techniques produce the best results. They created scenes that absolutely grip you, the tension and excitement created by newly hatched iguanas running from packs of snakes was more intense than any episode of Game of Thrones.

The strength and impact of this series was shown in the huge numbers which tuned in to watch it, with a surprising and exciting amount of younger people being drawn in too. I desperately hope that this means new generations are becoming more passionate about the natural world and will be readily joining together to protect it. This hope makes me wish even more that the environmental message of Planet Earth II was going to be a lot stronger. From episode one I was expecting something punchy and inspiring, an immediate call to arms to save a world in peril. Unfortunately, none materialised, but hopefully viewers will naturally write their own.