Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Bio:
Shelley Fairweather-Vega is a professional translator specializing in new prose and poetry from Central Asia. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
Shelley Fairweather-Vega left these thoughts for us: As experts in the field formerly known as "Russian Studies" wring their hands over how to even begin decolonizing the field, one which has always centered on a colonial power (the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, today's Russian Federation) which many are only just beginning to think of as colonial, one very easy route lies through literature. Let's begin to read, study, teach, translate creative writing and poetry and nonfiction from the colonized peoples of this enormous region, whether in the Baltics, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the "European" non-Russian countries, or places still part of the Russian Federation. Until very recently, English speakers have relied almost exclusively on Russian reporting to shape their views of Central Asia, for instance. We adopted the stories and stereotypes that the colonial power handed to us almost without questioning them. But this is like relying solely on Rudyard Kipling to shape our views of India and its neighbors. Why stop with what Lermontov or Tolstoy wrote about the Caucasus, why read only about Solzhenitsyn's stay in Uzbekistan, when we can read stories directly from the people who were born and raised there, who think of it as home, rather than dismissing Central Asia, in the Russian tradition, as a backwards, exotic, periphery of civilization? Continuing to ignore that writing can only hold us back. So let's find more, translate more, discover more!