Moorhouse explains, “I decided I needed to translate the writing of a woman who spoke openly and shamelessly about her desires.” In Mansour, she found a remarkable voice that seemed to terrify many into shunning her outright. At the height of the MeToo movement, Moorhouse realized a particular purpose when finding her next translation project. In her translator’s note, Moorhouse explained what provoked her to find a poet like Mansour to translate. She began writing entirely in French, despite being bilingual in Arabic and English. Mansour moved to Paris at 20 and, while there, she was swept up into the second wave surrealist scene-with André Breton as a mentor. Her mother died when she was 15, her first husband just three years later. Born in England in the 1920s to Egyptian-Jewish parents, Mansour grew up in Cairo as a member of Egyptian the upper-class. An English translation of the surrealist poet Joyce Mansour’s work has just arrived via City Lights in Emilie Moorhouse’s thoughtful and powerful translation.
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