By Natalia Toledo
Translated by Clare Sullivan
In Carapace Dancer, Natalia Toledo revisits some themes from her award-winning collection The Black Flower and Other Zapotec Poems (tr. Clare Sullivan, Phoneme, 2015).
Publication Date: January 21st, 2025
Paperback ISBN: 9781646053551
eBook ISBN: 9781646053674
Description
Toledo returns to the landscape of her childhood where animals predict the future and grandmothers shape masa. Again, she questions Zapotec traditions even as she mourns their disappearance. But in these poems Toledo takes more risks: she exposes her pain and that of her people in images at once elegant and raw. Like the crab, she edges into the past, but the hard shell of experience or cynicism provides only temporary protection to the human vulnerability beneath it.
Biographical Note
Natalia Toledo was born in Juchitán, Oaxaca. Her bilingual poetry (Zapotec-Spanish) has been included in numerous journals and anthologies, and translated into languages as varied as Nahuatl, Italian, and Punjabi. She has received support from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) and the Oaxaca State Fund for Culture and the Arts (FOESCA). Since 2019, she has served as Mexico’s Under Secretary of Cultural Diversity and Literacy.
Clare Sullivan, professor of Spanish at the University of Louisville, teaches language, poetry, and translation. She and her students work regularly on translation projects for the Louisville community. Recently she guest edited a special issue of Translation Review: “Translation as Community” Vol 1: Issue 1 (2023). Her collaborative translations of Natalia Toledo and Enriqueta Lunez have appeared in Phoneme Media and Ugly Duckling Presse.
Reviews
Ms. Magazine, Best Poetry of 2024 and 2025
“In Carapace Dancer’s trilingual presentation, the Spanish-speaking reader will notice that this is not a literal translation from the Spanish, but, as Sullivan explains, word choices were made to capture the meaning of the Isthmus Zapotec versions of the poems. In doing so, the translation preserves a sense of cultural and linguistic difference and does not fall into the trap of “domestication.” The collection is fascinating, and it encourages the reader to reread all the versions of the poems.” —World Literature Today