Skip to main content

Theme: Linguistic rights

Editorial

Welcome to PEN/Opp

To have been part of the emergence and growth of The Dissident Blog as from 2011 has been a schooling in the art of the...

Text: Elnaz Baghlanian October 18 2019
Fiction

Bittersweet dreams

In the beginnings of the 1990s the dramatist and actor Petrona de la Cruz Cruz founded FOMMA (Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya), an organisation for Maya women who make use of theatre as an educational and...

Text: Petrona de la Cruz Cruz December 12 2019
Article

Self-translation as a political activity

The writer and researcher Manuel Bolom Pale belongs to the Tsotsil people, the largest indigenous group in Mexico’s southernmost state Chiapas. “Writing in Tsotsil means reviving and reconnecting with...

Text: Manuel Bolom Pale November 26 2019
Article

The mother tongue of Babel

“Globalization is without a doubt a flood that will entomb more than half the languages of the world under water during the twenty-first century,” writes Carles Torner, a Catalonian author and the...

Text: Carles Torner November 21 2019
Article

The danger of teaching Uyghur language

According to the UN more than one million Uyghurs are detained in so called re-education camps in the Xinjiang province in North Eastern China. Their crime is that they speak the ‘wrong’ language and...

Text: Abduweli Ayup November 18 2019
Poetry

In America

Writers all over the world are today subjected to daily threats for practicing their basic human rights to freely express what they want in whichever language they choose. During her term of office...

Text: Jennifer Clement November 08 2019
Article

Falling apart

The right to use the Kurdish language has been a major controversy in Turkey all through the Republic’s existence. Ciwanmerd Kulek belongs to the younger generation of Kurdish writers who out of...

Text: Ciwanmerd Kulek November 01 2019
Article

How should we break the ice of silence?

How far do our words travel? This is the question that author Simona Škrabec asks in her essay about the importance of small, marginal, and “invisible” languages. She starts off in Chiapas at a three...

Text: Simona Škrabec October 29 2019
Poetry

So beautiful are the tongues

Alfred Msdala is a poet, critic, and currently the chairperson of PEN Malawi. During his term as chairperson, PEN Malawi has established a translation committee with the aim of translating important...

Text: Alfred Msadala October 25 2019
Article

Being Jts’ibajom te jbats’I k’optik

What is it to be Jts’ibajom te jbats’I k’optik – meaning, what is it to be a writer writing in one’s indigenous language? Does it entail a certain responsibility? Resistance? Defense? Taking a stand...

Text: Ruperta Bautista October 18 2019
Poetry

“Our essence changes, fades away”

Enriqueta Lunez, born in Chiapas in Mexico in 1981, is a poet and writer who belongs to the new generation of Tsotsil writers in the country writing in Tsotsil instead of Spanish. Her poems revolve...

Text: Enriqueta Lunez October 18 2019

Theme: Hong Kong Voices with China in View

Interview

Transforming Hong Kong

Bao Pu runs the publishing house New Century Press in Hong Kong that has published several politically sensitive books. In Jojje Olsson’s interview Bao Pu describes a Hong Kong that once had a...

Text: Jojje Olsson June 13 2019
Article

Letter to Gui Minhai

It has been over 1,400 days since the Swedish publisher Gui Minhai was imprisoned in China. This is a letter to Gui Minhai written by his publisher colleague Eva Gedin. “You cannot hear us but we are...

Text: Eva Gedin June 13 2019
Article

A Tale of Two Places

Jessica Yeung is a docent of translation at Hong Kong Baptist University where her research includes minority cultures. In this text she depicts the common denominators that weave together Hong Kong...

Text: Jessica Yeung June 13 2019
Fiction

Picnic at Victoria

”Justice is left unserved and history continues to be overwritten” Yoyo Chan, writer and translator, writes in her text that is taking place on the memorial day of the massacre at Tiananmen square in...

Text: Yoyo Chan June 13 2019
Poetry

Burn After Reading

Lui Waitong’s poem “Read and Burn” is a personal text that depicts generations of suffering against the foil of Chinese history. The author takes a retrospective look at her maternal grandfather who...

Text: Liu Waitong June 13 2019
Poetry

Takeout Poem

Writer and poet Cao Shuying was born in Harbin in northern China, but is currently living in Hong Kong. PEN/Opp publishes one of her poems—a poem where an unruly rebellious force is ever present:...

Text: Cao Shuying June 13 2019
Poetry

Writing Despite Inarticulateness

“They did everything to keep us asleep,” says Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, writer and Chairperson of PEN Hong Kong, in one of her poems. Ever present in her poetry is the worry she feels for the future of Hong...

Text: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming June 13 2019
Fiction

Hong Kong is my Myth and my Legend

Yan Lianke is one of China’s foremost authors. His recent texts have become more critical of society, which has made it harder to get them published. His works have either been retracted or not re...

Text: Yan Lianke June 13 2019
Article

Of Forbidden Words and Architecture in Hong Kong

In “Forbidden Words and Architecture in Hong Kong” author and journalist Ilaria Maria Sala sketches the development of architecture in Hong Kong as it opens more and more doors to Beijing and the...

Text: Ilaria Maria Sala June 13 2019

Like what you read?

Take action for freedom of expression and donate to PEN/Opp. Our work depends upon funding and donors. Every contribution, big or small, is valuable for us.

Donate on Patreon
More ways to get involved

Menu

Search