These days are strange. Time moves forward but we are not. We are grappling with intensified crisis and somehow it feels hopeless. Many of us try to cope with whatever we can. Some are privileged to still have stable income, many are not. And here we are mourning to death and angry to the government and insensible people who technically give a middle finger to exhausted health workers and alike (yes I’m talking about white Americans protested on the street). It’s not so easy to stay calm, but we somehow reach a point when we are numb, incapable of feeling sad or angry anymore. Baking and reading, writing and watching movies are an escape, a necessary one — not from the reality and suffering but from being destroyed by the wretch of hoplessness.

So What’s Your Name, Sandra? by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, Tiffany Tsao (tr.)
The grievance of a mother, for the death of a queer love. Mama Sandra mourned for his Bison, for the love that he had yet could not live. A mother wept. “The last hundred times she’d recalled this ritual they’d shared, mother and child, Mama Sandra had started to cry.” I couldn’t hold my tears when I read this. Stories on motherhood always get me, and Norman, as always, wrote beautifully and compassionately. His skilful wordplay on Indonesian language and Bataknese expressions, and Tiffany’s wonderful translation makes the story reach its finest: passionate and tender, witty and sincere.

Day to Day: The Story Begins Today by Mizuki Tsujimura, Louise Heal Kawai (tr.)
“April Fool’s is cancelled this year.” What’s the lie you can accept? This series compile flash stories from Japanese writers and if you’re interested to read some quick and nice fictions, you would like it.

The Great Passage by Shion Miura, Juliet Winters Carpenters (tr.)
Words, friendship, collegiality, and love. This novel is a story about a bunch of language-nerds aka lexicographers who grapple with words and meanings in their everyday lives. “A dictionary is a ship that crosses the sea of words” (p. 20). The story starts with Kohei Araki who have worked as lexicographer at Gembu Books publisher for thirty-seven years. He decided to retire and on his way to find a replacement, he discovered a young man with a background in linguistics with a hobby for collecting antiquarian books: Mitsuya Majime. The novel follows Majime, Araki, and the Division of Dictionary on their way to completing The Great Passage, a comprehensive 2,900-page of Japanese monolingual dictionary.

There are not many slice of life story about lexicographers and the world of dictionary publication; and that’s why I really like this book. I like how Shion Miura gives readers the mundane, meticulous works of making dictionary in a charming way. The relationships between characters are also enchanting. I particularly Majime-Nishioka’s friendship–they are very different people but can acknowledge each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Majime’s love letter to the granddaughter of his landlady, Kaguya, is one of my favorite scenes; and the commentary part from Nishioka is amusing.

I’m also glad that the anime adaptation of this novel is done well! I like the visual intepretation on the sea of words, in which the blue and grey color dominate the anime’s nuance. Zexcs (the anime studio) gives a really good series where we can see Majime’s gloomy and awkward appearance and Nishioka’s spirited personality turned into a very lovable couple. While the novel gives more rooms for Araki’s story, the anime decides to give more space for Majime-Nishioka.

“The Provincial Reader” by Sumana Roy is a great writing about reader in Bengal and the problem of reading. It is about the encounter with Western literature, the postcolonial tension, and an inequal world where books, poems, and street signs are not neutral inscription. It makes me re-thinking about the notion of “provinciality” in which many writers in the former colonies use to decentering European literature; to raise local writers, offering new and old marginalized voices. Provincial reader gives a bit of twist. “The sense of belatedness, of everything coming late” gives us “the same cultural anxiety, the same desire to know everything — except, increasingly, the immediate.” We become prone to the valorization of “epic life” — even the story of everyday must be done through “historical research.” Roy is right: “Historical novels satisfy the provincial reader’s gluttonous appetite for repletion, for a surfeit of spurious knowledge, while the poet and the essayist, artists of the fragmentary, are relegated to the status of minor artists.” Who are now these provincial readers?

I rarely subscribe to newsletter but three girls writing short essays about recipes, books, films, and everything in between? Yes, please. In Weekly, Maybe, Rara , Christabelle, and Avi give us a glimpse of their everyday lives: peculiar things on their works, books, films, recipe, mobile app. What I like with this kind of essay is the familiarity and how it can make me smile and murmur “hah I never thought about that.”