#yokotawada — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #yokotawada, aggregated by home.social.
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Finished *Memoirs of a Polar Bear* this morning. Fun read! At times quite moving. A good read for encouraging subtle shifts in the way we think about other beings and their being in the world.
I had once cobbled together a list of stories that took the perspectives of animals, or made animals the main characters. Tawada's book takes the first-person perspective of polar bears for two of its three parts; the remaining part is told from the perspective of a human trainer of a bear, but with a twist that still centers the bear's experience at times.
Storytelling felt a bit uneven at times but the overall spirit is one of near giddiness: Tawada's bears are part of the human world and move through it -- at least, as they'd tell it -- with capacities for language and understanding. Though sometimes tinged with pathos, you can sense Tawada's joy in writing this, bringing three animals to life as full characters on the page.
I might revisit that list and cross a few more titles off soon.
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"Someone tickled me behind my ears, under my arms. I curled up, becoming a full moon, and rolled on the floor. I may also have emitted a few hoarse shrieks. Then I lifted my rump to the sky and slid my head below my belly. Now I was a sickle moon, still too young to imagine any danger."
-- #FirstSentences of Yoko Tawada's *Memoirs of a Polar Bear*
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Archipelago of the Sun by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani. #YokoTawada #literature #books
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“Archipelago of the Sun” meanders across the Baltic Sea in search of a disappeared Japan. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2025/09/24/books/yoko-tawada-archipelago-of-the-sun-trilogy/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #culture #books #yokotawada #margaretmitsutani #translation #books #literature
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Sung in Japanese, German and Ukrainian, “Natasha” tells the story of an immigrant wandering through a series of hells on Earth. The modern opera opens in Tokyo with a star-studded crosscultural team behind it. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2025/08/09/stage/natasha-opera-japan/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #culture #stage #newnationaltheatretokyo #opera #theater #yokotawada #kazushiono #toshiohosokawa
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Ein richtig schöner Text, ein Interview mit Yoko Tawada, die ohnehin faszinierend ist.
#language #Sprache #literatur #literature #YokoTawada #Japan #Deutsch #German
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Book 31: “3 Streets” by #YokoTawada.
Three short stories named after streets, which themselves are named after famous people, in East Berlin. Surreal things happen. Tawanda’s writing was slippery for me and I ended up glazing over and skimming. There’s more there for people who know what to look for, but I wasn’t one of them. Finished only because it was so brief.
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From the deadly serious and deeply weird to the fluffiest of diversions, Japanese literature in the 2020s is a booming and eclectic realm. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2024/12/15/books/japanese-literature-translation/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #culture #books #books #literature #translation #miekokawakami #sayakamurata #yumiri #asakoyuzuki #yokoogawa #yokotawada #hiromikawakami #harukimurakami
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Thank you for this mini review, I am intrigued and now must read Tawada's book. As a German native speaker, I'll go for the German version. Paul Celan was immensely important to me when I was young, aesthetically and also, in a sense, politically. I could recite all of his first volume Mohn und Gedaechtniss by heart, and the way I speak today and give rhythm to my sentences very likely has Celanesque elements. Looking forward to Tawada's book!
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I've not been so excited at discovering a new novelist for years. Based on this first encounter I'm loving how smart, funny, contemporary and deeply philosophical (about linguistics, climate change, connections and politics) #YokoTawada's writing is. Still chuckling at the Greenlander mum who starts growing veggies and making salads as the snow and ice disappear, and Panska, the pan Scandinavian langue one of the main characters invents. I can't wait to read more by Tawada.
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I finished Yoko Tawada's "Paul Celan und der chinesische Engel" tonight, and it's such a difficult book to describe (for me at least). One amusing fact is that this is the first German book I've read in quite a while (despite German being my mother tongue), but maybe it's not that surprising that it took a Japanese writer writing in German to make that happen. 😁
It's incredibly dense but hugely enjoyable, and veers between being very funny and somewhat dark, and I feel that by not knowing very much about Paul Celan, I missed out on lots of hidden meaning (and probably lots of fun too). It's a dreamlike story, set during lockdown in early 2020 in Berlin, of a young (I think) Paul Celan researcher called Patrik (or more often just calling himself "The Patient") in the midst of some unnamed crisis or illness who meets a mysterious "trans-siberian angel", whose grandfather knew Celan during his time in Paris.
It does really want me look into Paul Celan a lot more, and maybe even read more German literature again. I also happen to go to a reading of hers in a London bookshop tomorrow evening, on the occasion of the English translation of this book being published in the UK, so am really looking forward to that.
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I like reading, and she likes rubbing her face against the hard edges of books. We both win 😺
#ReadingWithCats #YokoTawada #PaulCelanUndDerChinesischeEngel #CatsOfMastodon -
The author's latest book to be translated into English is simply Tawadaesque: peerless, unique and incomparable. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2024/08/28/books/yoko-tawada-paul-celan-and-the-trans-tibetan-angel/ #culture #books #japaneseliterature #yokotawada #susanbernofsky
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Out today, this novel sounds amazing: "Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel" by #YokoTawada (translated from German).
https://www.ndbooks.com/book/paul-celan-and-the-trans-tibetan-angel/
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"Jedes Herz schlägt seinen eigenen Rhythmus. Daher ist es eine Zumutung, gemeinsam mit Millionen Menschen in einem einzigen Schlafzimmer zu schlafen, das „WWW“ heißt. Wir werden früher oder später aus dem eigenen Herzrhythmus herausgeworfen." (Yoko Tawada)
#internet #rhythmus #zumutung #web #lovens #yokotawada #linernotes #signals #takase #schlippenbach #djillvibe #www #jazz
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teaching Yoko Tawada in my MA Theory course tonight as a kind of lab for discussion. Love this slide of all my Tawada
(The Naked Eye, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, The Emissary, Scattered All Over the Earth, and The Bridegroom was a Dog -- the latter the subject of tonight's chat)
