arts&life

books

continued from page 25

Idra Novey

where there’s a will,

There’s a way forward.

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26

June 29 • 2017

jn

“When an image stays with you, you
keep asking why. That led to the open-
ing pages of the book.”

things at once. It felt true to my life
when I was writing it.”
“One day, I had to be in three places
at once. I didn’t want to go to any of
them. What I wanted to do was disap-
pear into a tree with a book,” she says.
“That image stayed with me. When an
image stays with you, you keep asking
why. That led to the opening pages of
the book.
“When I started, I identified with the
translator and the daughter of the writer.
Over the course of five years, I had two
children and started to identify more
with the writer and mother who disap-
pears,” she says. “One of the themes is
about how everyone disappears and is
misunderstood, how they feel confined
by some definition that restricts who
they are. It’s true for all the characters
— everyone is resisting the confines of
some definition.”
Novey has taught English in a New
York City women’s prison through Bard
College. She sees herself as a writer/
activist in the tradition of Grace Paley
and Muriel Rukeyser. “As a writer, it’s
imperative to be present for the civil
rights issues of our time.”
She now lives in Brooklyn with her
husband and two young sons. Her hus-
band is from Chile, and his Sephardic
family is originally from Macedonia. At
home, they speak Spanish. The family is
involved with social justice efforts orga-
nized through a Brooklyn synagogue.
The day after learning that she
received the Rohr Prize, she was still
amazed. “I’m still kind of speechless,”

she says. “It’s encouraging that they
chose a book with a broad sensibility,
that highlighted the history of transla-
tion and Brazilian Jewish life in a way
that isn’t represented in the English
language.
“I once read in a festival with a
Brazilian poet who told me that I didn’t
sound like the other American writers in
the festival. I was always up to some-
thing that not everyone else was doing.”
About being identified as a Jewish
writer, she says, “I felt conspicuous as
a Jewish person growing up in such
an anti-Semitic, racist town. I am an
outsider and write from an outsider
perspective. But my life is defined by so
many things.
“When people talk about Jewish-
American literature, they leave out how
many translators are Jewish, how many
Jewish writers have given their time to
translating. It’s worth celebrating — not
just Jewish voices, but to have a more
open and compassionate conversation
in American literature.
“There are so many voices that need
to be heard. We need to bring underrep-
resented voices into the conversation,
as so many Jewish translators have
done,” she says.
“The global literary conversation is
vital; the one I want to be part of.”
Does the book have a message? “I
hope that readers leave the book loving
it for a reason other than the one that
led them to pick it up. That,” she says,
“is when a book succeeds.” •