Mireille Gansel grew up in the traumatic aftermath of her family losing everything—including their native languages—to Nazi Germany. In the 1960s and 70s, she translated poets from East Berlin and Vietnam. Gansel’s debut conveys the estrangement every translator experiences by moving between tongues, and muses on how translation becomes an exercise of empathy between those in exile.
"Represents a new generation of women's writing, one in which personal histories and maternal legacies are reclaimed in the context of a feminist consciousness of the effects of class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality on the individual life.... McNaron creates a vivid, moving, and memorable account of life and a person developing in, with, and against the times."–Nancy Porter, CALYX