Paper short abstract:

This article argues that the constellation of Japanese women involved in the editorial and translating project of Representative Works by Contemporary North American Black Women Writers, 1981-1982, demonstrates the significance of contextuality and intertextuality in feminist translation.

Paper long abstract:

From the mid-1970s through the early-1990s, a total of 37 translations of black women writers were published in Japan, compared to only 2 book translations prior to 1974. Among them, the publication of the 7-volume Representative Works by Contemporary North American Black Women Writers in the early 1980s was a turning point, as racial and gender issues were intertwined for the first time. The series reveals a mode of reading that explores the intersectionality of gender, race, and class with emphasis on the specific historical, social, and cultural contexts of each work. This article argues that the constellation of Japanese women involved in the editorial and translating project of the series demonstrates the significance of contextuality and intertextuality in feminist translation.

The series consists of 5 novels by Toni Morrison, Ellease Southerland, Ntozake Shange, Michele Wallace and Alice Walker, and 2 anthologies, edited respectively by Mary Helen Washington and Kazuko Fujimoto, the series editor. This article reviews the origins of the series by tracing the trajectory of Fujimoto’s rising reputation as a literary translator/editor with a strong background in the underground drama movement. It traces how Fujimoto endeavors to provide a panoramic view of African American women’s writing at the time by choosing and paying personal calls to the above-mentioned authors; and how Fujimoto’s belief in collective wisdom rallied the all-female troops of translators and commentators from different academic and artistic disciplines in Japan to participate in this project.

Overall, the series registers the dissonances and heterogeneity entailed in the local contexts of women reading women in Japan and America, as well as documenting the transnational communication networks forged through the efforts of translation and dialogue to create hypothetical “actual” encounters between black female writers and their Japanese counterparts while conveying a sense of synchronicity/solidarity among women readers.