On Your Feet: A Novel in Translations

L’exercice est de trouver de la place à l’intérieur d’un texte de la même manière que l’a fait, un temps, la poétesse en traduisant son propre nom.

How, in a time of vibrant need, do you surface what is repressed societally — lodged in the political unconscious? By translating it, Jacqueline Feldman has found.

Combining fiction in translation, travelogue, essay, the postcard, and a scholarly monograph, On Your Feet tells the story of a provincial city’s victory over the far-right figure, Marine Le Pen. It is the story of a cat-owning local poet’s valiant resistance and of a US woman — let us say an American girl — making her own, Joan-of-Arc-like entrance into the fray. This novel in translations slows time to take, with precision, the imprint of a moment in French and world history. It was a moment when fascist speech could be distinguished, still, from the great mass, separated out — leaving the moment, like the language, open to intervention.

Making contributions to the theory and practice of translation, which has been considered an applied linguistics, On Your Feet is a searching theorization of the politics of literature. What it offers, to readers of both languages or either, is a new kind of applied literature.

Featuring a story by Nathalie Quintane.

Paperback | 320 pages