Obscenity

Abstract

Obscenity Editorial note: From Invocación a las mayorías silenciosas (Invocation to the silent majorities) (Letraversal, 2022). Translated by Lawrence Schimel (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution I'm terrified of my migrant parents,always with their eyes set on flight. Is that how you solve everything, Papá?Are you going to once more do what he tells you, Mamá? I'm more terrified by the wound of birth,I hide it in the oriental part of the HERE.What was so bad so as to abandon the THEREwhere one finds oneself at just twenty?How did they do it to reconstruct (themselves),to recompose (themselves),to resist? How to raise an offspring who curses a place thatshe has never visited,who dreams in a language she doesn't know,who lives in another one which will always be foreign to her? What is so good to justify staying?What European dream is beingthe Chinese woman who sells beer,the Chinese man of the village,the Chinese girl of El Hormiguero,the Chinese kid of Física o Química,the China girl of China boy? That is not my dream. My dream is to be the blood that flows from the migratory wound,the Valencian queen of the gunpowder blessed by my ancestors. My dream is that they don't separate me from my fatherand from my motherinto one line for foreignersand another for Europeans,that we embarkthrough the same gate,that we fly togetherto whereverpassports arean obscenity. Translation from the Spanish [End Page 8] Paloma Chen Paloma Chen (b. 1997, Alicante) investigated the Chinese diaspora in Spain in Crecer en 'un chino' and has contributed to El Salto, El País, and La Marea. She won the 2020 Viva #LdeLírica National Poetry Prize and has recited in such festivals as Irreconciliables in Málaga and in spaces such as the Fórum Social Europeu das Migrações and the Asia Europe Peoples' Forum. Lawrence Schimel Lawrence Schimel is a bilingual author and literary translator based in Madrid, working in and between English and Spanish. His translations have won a PEN Translates Award from English PEN (three times) and the Cliff Becker Book Translation Award. Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma