ISSN 2011-799X
Date of receipt: 07/02/2020
Date of acceptance: 04/05/2020
DOI: 10.17533/udea.mut.v13n2a10Variable Frames: Women Translating Cuba
and (Afro-) Brazilian Women Writers
for the French Literary Market
Laëtitia Saint-Loubert
laetitiastl47@gmail.com
University of Warwick, England
Abstract
This article seeks to examine how contemporary works of fiction and non-fiction by women from
Cuba and Brazil are translated and marketed for Francophone readers. It will focus on Wendy Guer-
ra’s novels, translated into French by Marianne Millon, and on contemporary Brazilian (non) fic-
tion translated into French by Paula Anacaona, the head of Anacaona Éditions, a publishing outlet
specialized in Brazilian literature for Francophone readers. The contribution will start with a brief
presentation of the French publishing sector and some of the recurring patterns observed in what is
often labeled as littérature étrangère or littérature monde (foreign literature and world literature, respec-
tively), exploring various layers of intervention that appear in translated fiction. The article will then
further explore the role of paratext in the marketing of Caribbean literatures for (non-)metropolitan
French audiences, before it examines the translations of Todos se van and Domingo de Revolución by
Cuban writer Wendy Guerra. Paratextual matter in Marianne Millon’s Tout le monde s’en va and Un
dimanche de révolution will be analyzed as a site of feminine co-production, in which the author and
the translator’s voices at times collide in unison and at others create dissonance. In the case of Do-
mingo de revolución, the French translator’s practices will be compared to Cuban-American Achy Obe-
jas’s English translation (Revolution Sunday), in the hope of highlighting varying degrees of cultural
appropriation and/or acculturation, depending on the translator’s habitus and trajectory (Bourdieu)
and her own background. These reflections will lead to a broader analysis of paratext as a site of
further agency and potential redress as (Afro-) Brazilian history and literature are examined in works
circulated by writer/translator/publisher Paula Anacaona. Ultimately, figures traditionally sidelined
from hegemonic and patriarchal (his)stories, whose voices are restored in Anacaona’s paratextual
practices, will serve as illustrations of feminine publishing practices that challenge (phallo-)centric
models from the metropolis.
Keywords: women translators, (Afro-)Brazilian literature, Cuban literature, French literary market-
place, feminine paratext.
Encuadres variables: mujeres traductoras de autoras cubanas y (afro)
brasileñas para el mercado literario francés
Resumen
Este artículo se propone analizar cómo se traduce y presenta ante los lectores francófonos la (no)
ficción contemporánea escrita por autoras de Cuba y Brasil. Se centrará en las novelas de Wendy
Guerra, traducidas al francés por Marianne Millon, y en la ficción contemporánea brasileña tra-

Laëtitia Saint-Loubert402Mujeres y traducción en América Latina y el Caribe
ducida al francés por Paula Anacaona, directora de Anacaona Éditions, editorial especializada en
literatura brasileña para lectores francófonos. El artículo se inicia con una breve presentación sobre el
sector editorial francés y algunos patrones recurrentes observados en lo que suele catalogarse como
littérature étrangère o littérature monde (literatura extranjera y universal, respectivamente), explorando
diferentes capas de intervención que aparecen en la ficción traducida. El artículo explorará posterior-
mente el rol del paratexto en la comercialización de las literaturas caribeñas para audiencias francesas
(no) metropolitanas, antes de examinar las traducciones de Todos se van y Domingo de Revolución, de
la escritora cubana Wendy Guerra. Lo paratextual en Tout le monde s’en va y Un dimanche de révolution,
de Marianne Millon, se analizará como lugar de coproducción femenina, en el que chocan las voces
de la autora y la traductora, unas veces al unísono, otras creando disonancia. En el caso de Domingo
de revolución, se compararán las prácticas de la traductora francesa con la traducción al inglés de la
cubano-americana Achy Obejas (Revolution Sunday), con la esperanza de poner en primer plano los
diferentes grados de apropiación cultural o aculturación, dependiendo del habitus y la trayectoria de la
traductora (Bourdieu) y de su formación. Esas reflexiones llevarán a un análisis más amplio del pa-
ratexto como lugar de nueva agencia y posible compensación, mediante el análisis de la historia y la
literatura (afro) brasileña en las obras distribuidas por la autora-traductora-editora Paula Anacaona.
Finalmente, varias figuras que por lo general se omiten en las historias hegemónicas y patriarcales, y
cuyas voces son restauradas en las prácticas paratextuales de Anacaona, servirán como ilustración de
las prácticas editoriales femeninas que cuestionan los modelos (falo) céntricos de la metrópoli.
Palabras clave: traductoras, literatura (afro)brasileña, literatura cubana, mercado literario francés,
paratexto femenino.
Cadres variables : Lorsque des femmes traduisent des écrivaines cubaines
et (afro)brésiliennes pour le marché du livre français
Résumé
Cette contribution propose d’examiner comment les textes d’auteures cubaines et (afro-)brésiliennes
sont traduits et présentés pour des lecteurs francophones. Elle étudiera plus précisément le paratexte
utilisé dans des romans de Wendy Guerra traduits en français par Marianne Millon, ainsi que dans
des œuvres de fiction et essais (afro-)brésiliens contemporains traduits en français par Paula Ana-
caona, qui est également à la tête d’une structure éditoriale éponyme installée en région parisienne et
spécialisée dans les littératures du Brésil. L’article commencera par présenter certaines tendances obser-
vées dans ce qui est souvent présenté comme de la littérature étrangère ou littérature monde sur le marché
littéraire français, notamment en lien avec divers degrés et formes d’intervention que l’on peut observer
dans la fiction traduite et qui prend souvent la forme de notes (infrapaginales ou de fin). Puis l’article
explorera le rôle du paratexte dans les littératures traduites pour des lecteurs francophones, avant d’étu-
dier certains aspects des traductions de Todos se van et Domingo de Revolución, deux romans de la Cubaine
Wendy Guerra. Dans le cas de Domingo de Revolución, la traduction française de Marianne Million
sera brièvement comparée à la traduction anglaise de la Cubaine-Américaine Achy Obejas (Revolution
Sunday), afin de dégager différents degrés d’appropriation culturelle et/ou d’acculturation en fonction
de l’habitus et de la trajectoire (Bourdieu) de la traductrice. Ces réflexions nous permettront d’analyser
les espaces paratextuels comme de potentiels espaces de réajustement pour l’histoire et la littérature
(afro)brésiliennes à travers les travaux publiés par Paula Anacaona. Nous tenterons de voir comment,
à travers des figures de femmes traditionnellement écartées ou effacées des histoires hégémoniques et
patriarcales du Brésil, leurs voix peuvent être restaurées dans les espaces paratextuels tels que les utilise
Anacaona. Cela nous amènera à élargir nos réflexions à des méthodes de publication féminines qui
interrogent les modèles (phallo)centriques depuis la métropole.
Mots-clés : traductrices, littérature (afro-)brésilienne, littérature cubaine, marché du livre français,
paratextes féminins.

Variable Frames: Women Translating Cuban and (Afro-) Brazilian
Women Writers for the French Literary Market403Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 13, N.°2, 2020, July-December,pp.401-420
“De nada sirve ser leída, premiada, traducida a va-
rias lenguas si no puedes ser reconocida en tu país,
encontrar tus lectores originales, compartir tu obra
con los tuyos.”
Domingo de revolución (Guerra, 2016, p. 58).
“Being read, honored, translated into several
languages doesn’t matter if you’re not recognized in
your own country, if you can’t find your original
readers, if you can’t share your work with your own
people.”
Revolution Sunday, (Guerra, trans. Obejas, 2018, p. 41)
1. Introduction
Translation remains of the essence for Carib-
bean texts to circulate beyond their original
sites of production, be it in the region itself or,
as is more often the case, outside its bounds
and mostly from a metropolis—or literary hub
or center—usually located in a former colonial
power. Yet, as the opening epigraph suggests,
global circulation might not always grant a
Caribbean writer visibility, let alone recogni-
tion of their work in their own home region.
This is all the more verified when literary
circulation—and translation—operate under
strict state control, as suggested by Cuban au-
thor Wendy Guerra in her fiction, and as has
been shown in various academic works focus-
ing on patronage in literary systems.1 Women
writers in particular tend to be marginalized
and to enjoy late and limited recognition in the
specific contexts of Cuban and Brazilian writ-
ing, which will serve as our two primary areas
of study.2 In Cuba, for instance, it has been
1 In the specific context of translated children’s litera-
ture circulating in the former German Democratic Re-
public, see Thomson-Wohlgemuth (2009). For a more
general study of translation as a form of rewriting that
is invariably subject to ideological framings and manip-
ulation, see Lefevere (1992).
2 Although Brazilian writing is traditionally treated as
a literary field of its own, separate from Caribbean
argued that women writers started to reach
higher visibility in the 1990s only, during the
“special period”, when a more significant body
of their works—mostly short fiction—started
to garner some attention, whereas a similar
recognition had already taken place two dec-
ades earlier in other parts of Latin America
(Vergès, 2011). When it comes to Brazilian lit-
erature, and to Afro-Brazilian women writers
more specifically, their invisibility seems to be
an ongoing struggle, as, to quote the country’s
most prominent contemporary Black writer,
Conceição Evaristo, cited here in translation:
“On attend de la femme Noire qu’elle réalise
certaines fonctions, comme très bien cuisiner,
danser, chanter, mais jamais écrire. Parfois, on
me demande : « Vous chantez ? » Je réponds :
« Je ne chante pas, je ne danse pas. J’écris. »”
[We expect a Black woman to fulfil certain
tasks, such as cooking, dancing or singing, but
writing, never. Sometimes people ask me: ‘Do
you sing?’ and I reply: ‘I do not sing and I do
not dance. I write.’] (Evaristo, 2018).3 If access
to the works of some contemporary Cuban and
Brazilian women writers can then doubtless be
limited or altogether obstructed depending on
their original milieu or background—whether
it is social, political or ethnoracial—in their
own home countries, does this inevitably con-
demn them to further invisibilization in the
writing, I have chosen to group together Cuban and
(Afro-) Brazilian writing in this article to interrogate
the limits of geographical demarcations in the study of
literatures from the region, which often follow Euro-
centric groupings based on linguistic continua (the so-
called “French-, Spanish-, English- and Dutch-speak-
ing Caribbean”). My aim is to offer a remapping of
the Caribbean that complexifies the power dynamics
in the region, particularly where literary circulation is
concerned, and to promote more transversal pathways
of exchange.
3 Originally cited in French in the author’s biography
in Evaristo (2018). All translations in brackets are mine,
unless otherwise indicated.

Laëtitia Saint-Loubert404Mujeres y traducción en América Latina y el Caribe
global literary marketplace? Fortunately, the
answer seems to be in the negative, thanks to
the investment and dedication of both Carib-
bean and non-Caribbean cultural brokers who
help those works resonate beyond their origi-
nal shores. In fact, the original exclusion and
marginalization experienced by some Cuban
and (Afro-)Brazilian women writers can pre-
cisely be what independent publishers stress
to reconfigure labels such as “mainstream” or
“global” literature from an activist standpoint,
as they carry those texts to other topographies,
whilst operating from a metropolis. Commen-
surate with this objective, the various degrees
and forms of framing that are used in the
translation of works by those women writers
often contribute to emphasizing their margin-
alization and lack of visibility in their original
literary milieu to readers of the host culture. In
that regard, the aim of this article is twofold.
Looking at the contemporary French liter-
ary market, the contribution will interrogate,
through its study of translational paratext car-
ried out by women translators of works by Cu-
ban and (Afro-) Brazilian women writers, how
their use of footnotes and prefatorial matter
can be identified as sites of fluctuating degrees
of gendered agency that range from seemingly
genderless to more feminine or even potential-
ly feminist strategies. Secondly, the article will
show how the variable framing strategies used
by women translators will also be indicative of
their respective positionings within the French
literary marketplace. To do so, the paratext
used in the translations of works by Cuban
and (Afro-) Brazilian women writers will be
studied in relation to their specific socio-cul-
tural contexts of production. Here, Bourdieu-
sian terminology will be used to explore how
the translator’s own background and profes-
sional trajectory may inform her paratextual
strategies. More specifically, Bourdieu’s con-
cepts of habitus and trajectory will serve to
identify potential patterns that complement
a purely textual approach to translational pa-
ratext. As for the study of translatorial para-
text as a site of feminine agency, we will draw
on various frameworks that have emerged in
the field of Translation Studies (Arrojo, 1994;
Dueck, 2014; von Flotow, 2009) to further ex-
plore the links between interventionism and
intersectionality.
To explore those issues, the contribution will
examine how Wendy Guerra’s novels, which
have all been translated by the same transla-
tor, Marianne Millon, are in turn framed for
Francophone readers. The translator’s foot-
notes in particular will be analyzed and com-
pared with an English version of Domingo de
revolución, one of Guerra’s novels translated
by Cuban-American writer Achy Obejas for
the North American market, to reveal how,
from the margins and interstices of the text
carried across in another language, the trans-
lator’s varying degrees of intervention at times
aim to foster a sense of curiosity and accul-
turation for the reader, and, at others, rather
seek to accommodate the original to the re-
ceiving culture. Bearing this point in mind,
the contribution will then address works by
Afro-Brazilian women writers that have been
translated for Francophone readers by writer
and activist publisher Paula Anacaona. Here,
the paratextual material—mostly taking the
form of footnotes and prefaces—deployed
by Anacaona will be further examined as
a site of intended redress for female voices
that were long silenced or erased from Bra-
zilian (hi)stories. Through her translational
and publishing practices that aim to challenge
dominant, (phallo)centric discourses and to
translocate—rather than globalize4
—forms of
4 By insisting on “translocal” rather than “global” path-
ways of exchange, this article seeks to complexify the
North-South paradigm often found in gravitational
models of literary circulation and to promote instead a

Variable Frames: Women Translating Cuban and (Afro-) Brazilian
Women Writers for the French Literary Market405Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 13, N.°2, 2020, July-December,pp.401-420
Afro-Brazilian feminism, Anacaona invites us
to interrogate an otherwise partially “color-
blind” French literary market, as this article
will argue. But before these particular aspects
of the paper are explored, a brief overview of
the contemporary French book sector, some
of the patterns observed in its segmentation
and interventionist tendencies characteristic
of its translated fiction will be provided.
2. Translating Caribbean literature
for the French literary marketplace
When entering the global literary marketplace
and the French publishing sector more specif-
ically, translated Caribbean fiction is often la-
beled as part of the domaine étranger, in other
words considered as “foreign literature”, and
rarely, if ever, classified as “Caribbean” litera-
ture. This reality is particularly manifest when
browsing the shelves of bookstores in mainland
France, also known as the métropole, whether
they are (inter)national chain stores owned by
powerful media consortia or local, independ-
ent bookshops, even if the latter sometimes
specialize in an easily identifiable portion of
the literary sector.5 Such classifications, which
are not specific to the French marketplace
transversal approach that bypasses certain cultural road-
blocks whilst stressing the situatedness of each context
of reception as texts circulate beyond their original site
of production. For a detailed analysis of a translocal
approach to (feminist) translation (see Alvarez, de Lima
Costa, Feliu, Hester, Klahn & Thayer, 2014; de Lima
Costa, 2014, pp. 19-36; 20-21).
5 In Paris in particular, there are a number of such
bookshops, the most specialized of which often act as
a subdivision of a publishing outlet focusing on a very
specific niche of the literary market. See, for example,
Éditions/Librairie Coelacanthe, specialized in Comori-
an literature. In the French Antilles, Éditions/Librairie
Jasor, based in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, also comes
to mind as a structure focusing primarily on Caribbean
literature.
alone, often divide up Caribbean literature
into fluctuating categories that shift over time
and place and generally tend to overlap with
broader lines of demarcation that are usually
drawn according to linguistic continuity. Au-
thors from the Hispanophone Caribbean, for
example, will be classified as part of the “Lat-
in American” literary sphere, whereas writers
from the French Antilles or Guyana are simply
categorized as part of the French or Franco-
phone canon, depending on their degree of
visibility and recognition, but also their pub-
lisher and the imprint or collection in which
their work is featured. This last point is of par-
ticular importance, as it raises the issue of the
ghettoization of writers who are not primari-
ly identified as Franco-French writers (that is
from the métropole), but are marketed instead
as part of the so-called “Francophonie”. This
specifically—although not exclusively—holds
true for non-white writers from the French
overseas territories known as the drom-coms6
who decide to publish their work in main-
land France and, as such, may have to comply
with certain categorizations that label them as
“Black”, “African” or “writers from the Global
South”, as Nadège Veldwachter argues:
Pour certains auteurs, la parution de leurs textes
dans des collections spéciales, telles les célèbres
« Encres noires » et « Lettres du Sud », se résume
à une forme de « ghettoïsation » littéraire de la
part des éditeurs parisiens : « créer une collec-
tion spécifique à la littérature nègre revient à
la parquer dans un espace précis, à cataloguer
et à classer l’inclassable, à marginaliser la pro-
duction littéraire hors du champ de la littérature
conçue comme un tout indivisible ». Les labels
6 The former stands for Départements et Régions d’Outre-
Mer and includes Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Marti-
nique, Mayotte, and La Réunion. The latter stands for
Collectivités d’Outre-Mer and includes half of Saint-Mar-
tin, Saint-Barthémély, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Wal-
lis-and-Futuna, French Polynesia, and New Caledonia.

Laëtitia Saint-Loubert406Mujeres y traducción en América Latina y el Caribe
de L’Harmattan ou de Karthala, même s’ils ont
aujourd’hui acquis une reconnaissance interna-
tionale, ont équivalu à leur début à un réseau
identifiable où l’adjectif « africain » prenait le pas
sur le nom « écrivain » dans la psyché du lectorat.
[For some authors, the publication of their
works in special collections, such as the well-
known “Encres noires” [“Black inks”] and
“Lettres du Sud” [“Literatures of the South”],
amount to no less than a form of literary “ghet-
toization” on the part of Parisian publishers:
“creating an imprint devoted to Black literature
means to confine it within a particular segment,
to label what is unclassifiable, and to place liter-
ary production at the margins of the field of lit-
erature conceived as an indivisible whole”. The
imprints from L’Harmattan or Karthala, even
though they have now acquired international
renown, were at first easily identifiable as a spe-
cific network where the adjective “African” was
more important than “writer” in the mind of
the reader.] (Veldwachter, 2012, pp. 84–85).
If such classifications contribute to further bal-
kanizing—if not inevitably dislocating—the
Caribbean and its literary production, they also
reinforce lines of fracture and roadblocks that
persist not only in the transnational circulation
of literature, albeit for a variety of reasons, but
also within the logics of territorial continuity.
This is most evident in Gisèle Sapiro’s work
on the global circulation of translated fiction
in France and the US, in which she argues that
“[d]enationalization does not mean deterritori-
alization” where the book market is concerned
(Sapiro, 2010, p. 423). Needless to say that
such categorizations further contribute to rein-
forcing the asymmetrical nature of the flows
of literary exchange between North and South,
which are at the heart of gravitational models.
When looking more specifically at translated
fiction in the French literary sector, one cannot
help but notice a certain degree of intervention-
ism. The late scholar Pascale Casanova spoke,
for instance, of the importation of foreign lit-
eratures as a form of “conquest” and cultural
“appropriation” where France is concerned, a
tendency she traced back to the Renaissance
period known as “les Belles Infidèles” in the
history of French translation practices (Casa-
nova, 2015, pp. 68-69). If interventionist prac-
tices can still be observed nowadays in fiction
translated into French, they do not necessarily
imply forms of cultural appropriation, nor can
be they be systematically described as ethno-
centric. When taking the form of prefatorial
matter—prefaces or afterwords—and foot/
endnotes, paratexts also provide the reader
with “relevant information about the prevail-
ing translation norms in a given culture (doxa)
and at a given moment in time, as well as infor-
mation about the images that translators have
of themselves.” (Gil-Bajardí, Orero & Rovi-
ra-Esteva, 2012, p. 9). When comparing, for
example, Wendy Guerra’s novel Domingo de
Revolución with its French and English trans-
lations, the French translation by Marianne
Millon immediately stands out as the most in-
terventionist, as she inserts a number of foot-
notes—sixteen in total—deemed essential for
a Francophone reader.7 On the contrary, Achy
Obejas’s translation does not feature a single
foot/endnote or glossary entry, although a
close reading of the text reveals other forms of
7 During a phone interview conducted with Marianne
Millon on 12 December 2019, she confirmed that the
footnotes were for the most part her own choice, al-
though they were sometimes the result of a discussion
with the editor who sought more clarity on a specif-
ic aspect of the text (I shall come back to that point
in part 3). Millon further commented that as a reader
and translator she preferred footnotes over endnotes,
which, to her, can constitute a roadblock in the reading
experience. On the contrary, with footnotes, she feels
that the reader is at liberty to decide whether or not to
read the additional information provided at the bottom
of the page.

Variable Frames: Women Translating Cuban and (Afro-) Brazilian
Women Writers for the French Literary Market407Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 13, N.°2, 2020, July-December,pp.401-420
in-text intervention in Revolution Sunday, a text
clearly marketed for a North American reader-
ship, as will be argued. If, at first glance, those
translations appear to be located in easily iden-
tifiable host cultures that obey two seemingly
opposed logics of translation, whereby one
would espouse an ideal of transparency and
invisibility8
, and the other would apparently
lend more agency to the translator, both will be
studied as non-centric textual sites of interven-
tion where women translators raise issues of
cultural appropriation and acculturation from
their respective locations and habita. But if
paratextual interventions act as sites of social
norms and traditions, they can also be identi-
fied as gendered spaces of agency, as several
translation scholars have shown. Luise von
Flotow and Rosemary Arrojo have for their
part identified feminist translation practices
as experimental and provocative gestures that
aim to create “a greater shock effect” than fem-
inine strategies (Arrojo, 1994, p. 155, quoting
Barbara Godard). In von Flotow’s terminolo-
gy, feminist translation strategies consist in a
higher degree of “hijacking” the text, whereas
feminine translation strategies correspond to
a lesser degree of experimentation with and
violence to the text, something that would be
more akin to “supplementing” it with a didac-
tic apparatus taking the form of prefaces and
(foot)notes (von Flotow, 2009, p. 2). Bearing
these differences in mind, the article will now
turn to a textual analysis of excerpts from
Wendy Guerra’s novels alongside their French
and English translations to examine the vari-
ous degrees of (gendered) agency performed
by each translator.
8 The ‘illusion of transparency’ in translations pub-
lished in the United States has famously been criticized
by Lawrence Venuti (see 1995).
3. Adjustable frames: feminine
interventions on translated fiction
from Cuba
To date, all five novels by Wendy Guerra have
been published in France, the latter of which,
Un Dimanche de révolution was published by
Buchet/Chastel, an editorial outlet founded
in 1936 that is now part of a consortium of
presses known as Groupe Libella, whereas
the four previous ones were all published by
Stock, a well-established publishing house
that is now part of the international con-
glomerate Hachette Book Group. 9 All five
novels were translated by Marianne Millon,
a seasoned literary translator specialized in
hispanophone literatures, who was initially
commissioned for the translation of Todos se
van, Guerra’s first novel to be translated into
French. In the United States, on the other
hand, only two of Guerra’s novels have been
translated into English, Todos se van (Every-
one Leaves, 2012) and Domingo de Revolución
(Revolution Sunday, 2018). Both translations
were done by Cuban-American writer/trans-
lator Achy Obejas, although they were pub-
lished by different presses (AmazonCrossing
for the former and Melville House Publish-
ing for the latter). Millon, who is not from
Cuba herself, has translated a wide range of
authors from the Americas, which include
Argentine writers Macedonio Fernández,
Gabriel Rolón, Aurora Venturini and Natalia
Moret, Mexican writers Paco Ignacio Taibo
ii, Fabio Morábito, Jorge Volpi, Eloy Urroz,
9 The French translations of Wendy Guerra’s first nov-
els appeared under the following titles: Tout le monde
s’en va (Guerra, 2008), Mère Cuba (2009), Poser nue à La
Havane (2010) and Negra (2014). For more information
on Buchet/Chastel and Stock, their editorial line and
history, see, respectively: < http://buchetchastel.fr/
historique>, accessed 30 January 2020 and <https://
www.editions-stock.fr/lhistoire-des-editions-stock>,
accessed 31 January 2020.

Laëtitia Saint-Loubert408Mujeres y traducción en América Latina y el Caribe
Ignacio Padilla and Cuban writers Senel Paz
and William Navarette, in addition to Wendy
Guerra. As such, Millon enjoys a certain visi-
bility and recognition of her work as a literary
translator in France: she is regularly invited
to literary events that celebrate translation,
delivers workshops on translation at various
academic institutions across the country and
takes an active part in the promotion of liter-
ary translation through her engagement with
various organizations that vindicate transla-
tors’ rights.10 For her work on Guerra’s novels,
Millon met with the author in Spain and has
exchanged regularly with her since, particu-
larly on literary and religious aspects of her
novels for which the translator felt she needed
more information. This is especially the case
for Negra, which abounds with references to
Afro-Cuban religious beliefs and practices and
remain, on the whole, very little known in
mainland France.11 In Todos se van, although
the majority of footnotes aims at clarifying
10 See in particular <https://tradabordo.blogspot.
com/2009/09/entretien-avec-une-traductrice-mari-
anne.html>, <http://www.atlas-citl.org/wp-content/
uploads/2016/09/viceversa_ESP_30.01_04.02.2017_
ok.pdf> and <https://webtv.univ-rouen.fr/permal-
ink/v1251774c0f60vggj95q/> that testify to her vari-
ous professional commitments.
11 During our phone interview, Millon confirmed
that the resources she found online on orixas and Af-
ro-Cuban religious practices were limited and that her
exchanges with Cuban writer William Navarette, who
lives in France and some of whose works have been
translated by Millon, provided her with a wealth of “in-
sider” information for her translation of Negra.
cultural references, particularly those pertain-
ing to Cuban writers and artists whose works
remain either untranslated or fairly unknown
in France, one footnote in particular is of inter-
est as it lifts ambiguity on a hairstyle, the “es-
pendrum”, which is described in Example 1.
Although Guerra provides a description of
the hairstyle in the excerpt, which Millon re-
produces in the French version, the transla-
tor adds a footnote that further confirms that
this is an “Afro hairstyle”. Interestingly, this
extract associates the Spanish term “jíbaro”,
whose meaning in Cuba differs from that in
Puerto Rico and refers here to an unsociable,
gruff person, but takes on an added meaning in
French, as the term becomes “sauvage”, which
means both uncivilized and nongregarious.12
In turn, the Cuban term that designates a per-
son from the countryside, “guajiró/a”, is kept
as such in several instances of the novel and
subsequently explained in a footnote either as
“someone from the countryside” (“originaire
de la campagne”) or as a “country bumpkin”
(“paysanne”) depending on the tone of the
passage, as shown in the two excerpts in Ex-
ample 2.
In the first extract, guajiro directly refers to
singer Gilberto Noda. The term is associat-
ed with a type of traditional, popular music
that is further described in the passage and ex-
12 For the different meanings of jíbaro/a in Spanish, see
the online dictionary of the Real Academia Española
<https://dle.rae.es/jíbaro>, accessed 31 January 2020.
Example 1
Leandro llego con tremendo «espendrum». No sé
cómo se escribe esa palabra, pero es un peinado con
el pelo redondo y alborotado hacia arriba. Como él es
mulato se le pone jíbaro de verdad. (Guerra, 2006, p.
105; emphasis mine)
Leandro est arrivé avec un incroyable « espendrum ».
Je ne sais pas comment on écrit ce mot, mais c’est une
coiffure avec les cheveux en boule et crêpés jusqu’au
sommet du crâne1
. Comme c’est un mulâtre, ça lui fait
une vraie tête de sauvage.
1Coiffure afro.
(Guerra, 2008, p. 102 ; emphasis mine)

Variable Frames: Women Translating Cuban and (Afro-) Brazilian
Women Writers for the French Literary Market409Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 13, N.°2, 2020, July-December,pp.401-420
plained in a series of four footnotes that were
added to the translation, all of which aim to
make the reader more familiar with Cuban
culture, albeit at the risk—some may argue—
of turning Cuba into a “scenography” attuned
to the (putative) tastes of French readers (see
Jameson, 1986, pp. 65-88). At the same time,
those choices allow the translator to keep Cu-
ban specificities intact in the translation and
“move the reader towards the writer”, as fa-
mously recommended by Schleiermacher
(1992, p. 42). In a way, one could then argue
with von Flotow that Millon’s “feminine”
presence can be felt in the French version
through her explanatory footnotes. Although
the first passage quoted above might read like
a musico-ethnography of Cuba, it should be
noted that it features as an exception com-
pared with the rest of Millon’s translations
of Guerra’s works, which tend to restrict the
number of footnotes to one (or two) per page.
Moreover, on the whole, Millon’s translation-
al paratext further serves to introduce French
readers to socio-historical events that charac-
terize Cuba and which, to her, remain largely
unknown in mainland France 13
. Millon recon-
textualizes, for example, the Padilla case in
Un dimanche de révolution, whereas the English
13 During our phone interview, Millon also stressed the
fact that she does not intend for her interventions to
read like dictionary entries, though. To her, footnotes
are optional and the reader may or may not wish to
conduct further personal research of their own.
Example 2
Se murió Gilberto Noda, el cantante guajiro. Era
ocurrente y decía malas palabras en las décimas.
También tocaba el guayo en Los Naranjos, el conjunto
que apadrina mami. Ha venido Luis Gómez, el viejito
poeta que siempre anda con la botella en el bolsillo
de atrás. Ellos vienen aquí y el apartamento del
Palomar, comen, toman, cantan y se van. Mi madre
les graba en la emisora sus cintas para ponerlos en los
programas. A muy pocos les gusta este trabajo. Ya
no los dejan salir en vivo porque siempre dicen lo que
les da la gana. Luis Gómez dice tonadas trinitarias y
la trailará. Me dormía en la emisora cantándome una
tonada que me aprendí de memoria […]. (Guerra,
2006, p. 28)
Gilberto Noda, le chanteur guajiro1
, est mort. Il était
spirituel et disait des gros mots dans les décimas2
. Il
jouait aussi du guayo3 avec Los Naranjos, le groupe
dont Mami s’occupe. Luis Gómez, le vieux poète qui
a toujours une bouteille dans la poche arrière de son
pantalon, est venu. Ils viennent ici et à l’appartement
de Palomar, mangent, boivent, chantent et s’en vont.
Ma mère enregistre leurs cassettes à la radio pour les
passer après dans les émissions. Peu de gens aiment ce
travail. On ne les laisse plus jouer en direct parce qu’ils
disent toujours ce qu’ils veulent. Luis Gómez chante des
airs de Trinidad4 et la trailará5
. Il m’endormait à la radio
en me chantant un air que j’ai appris par cœur […].
1 Originaire de la campagne.
2 Chanson improvisée à partir d’un thème populaire
paysan.
3 Instrument de percussion en bois comportant des
entailles sur lequel on frotte une petite baguette.
4 Ville de Cuba connue pour ses chanteurs populaires.
5 Référence au « tralala » qui ponctue les chansons
populaires.
(Guerra, 2008, p. 28 ; emphasis mine)
En la escuela me dicen guajira, porque vengo de otra
provincia. Pero los guajiros son ellos, que no saben
pronunciar correctamente las palabras, se comen las
eses y todo lo terminan con ele.
(Guerra, 2006, p. 124)
À l’école, on me traite de guajira1
, parce que je viens
d’une autre province. Mais les paysans, c’est eux, ils ne
sont même pas capables de prononcer correctement
les mots, ils mangent les -s et ils finissent tous les mots par
un -l.
1 Paysanne.
(Guerra, 2008, p. 121 ; emphasis mine)

Laëtitia Saint-Loubert410Mujeres y traducción en América Latina y el Caribe
translation does not add any further informa-
tion (Example 3).
In this example, the footnote allows the trans-
lator to present a transnational literary ge-
nealogy between three writers allied against
censorship, one of which is traditionally con-
sidered as a canonical French writer, whilst
Obejas’s translation leaves such possibilities
completely open for the reader to discover
at his/her own leisure, shunning any form
of paratextual intervention. One way of in-
terpreting such interventions—or seeming
lack thereof—in the French and English
translations is to look at them as socially in-
formed practices that obey different market-
ing trends and strategies. Richard Philcox,
for one, readily admits that his translations
of Maryse Condé’s works in English promote
an ideal of transparency that is more “mar-
ket-oriented” than his wife’s original works
in French, which, to him, tend to entertain
a certain opacity and to be more demanding
on the part of the reader (Kadish and Mas-
sardier-Kinney, 1996, p. 751). Considering the
translator’s own social trajectory within each
literary field as well as the reader’s own habi-
tus further helps us identify potential patterns
that complement a purely textual approach to
translational paratext. Pierre Bourdieu coined
the concepts of habitus and trajectory, which
both refer to the conditions of circulation and
reception of cultural objects, and books more
specifically, within a given social environment
(Bourdieu, 1998). The former presents, within
the French literary field, the social norms and
institutions in place that contribute to creating
a specific cultural setting for the production
and reception of cultural goods, whereas the
latter insists on the social journey and evolv-
ing positioning of various individuals who are
part of a given habitus (see Bourdieu, 1998,
p. 351 and p. 486). Both concepts have in turn
been conceptualized in works by translation
scholars to insist on the importance of social
norms and the role of institutions in the pro-
duction and praxis of translation. Such is the
case in Constructing a Sociology of Translation,
in which Michaela Wolf aptly reminds us that
[a]ny translation, as both an enactment and a
product, is necessarily embedded within social
contexts. On the one hand, the act of translat-
ing, in all its various stages, is undeniably car-
ried out by individuals who belong to a social
system; on the other, the translation phenom-
enon is inevitably implicated in social institu-
tions, which greatly determine the selection,
production and distribution of translation and,
as a result, the strategies adopted in the trans-
lation itself. […] The social function and the
Example 3
Dijo ser un funcionario. ¿Un
funcionario? ¿Alguien que se
durmió en la época del caso
Padilla y despertó hoy? (Guerra,
2016, pp. 21-22)
He said he was a civil servant. Civil
servant? Someone who fell asleep
around the time of the Padilla Affair
and woke up today? (Guerra, 2018,
p. 9)
Il prétendait être fonctionnaire. Un
fonctionnaire ? Quelqu’un qui s’est
endormi à l’époque de l’affaire
Padilla1 pour se réveiller aujourd’hui ?
1 Heberto Padilla (1932-2000), poète et
romancier cubain accusé d’avoir écrit
des textes subversifs, emprisonné en 1972
et contraint à une autocritique publique.
Soutenu par des intellectuels tels que
Cortázar ou Sartre, il fut rapidement
libéré mais placé en résidence surveillée
jusqu’en 1980.
(Guerra, 2017, p. 21)

Variable Frames: Women Translating Cuban and (Afro-) Brazilian
Women Writers for the French Literary Market411Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 13, N.°2, 2020, July-December,pp.401-420
Example 4
La Habana para mí ya no es
una capital, se hace pequeña,
mediocre, su belleza no va a
impedir que se extinga; una
ciudad la hace su gente, entre
las ruinas y la diáspora la estamos
liquidando. Desconozco a sus
habitantes, tienen acento de la
costa norte o del sur de Oriente
o una conducta tribal que no se
parece en nada a la de la ciudad
que me presentaron en la infancia.
Hay como una haitianización en la
conducta de los seres que llegan
a habitarla. Se come de pie, con
el plato en la mano, o se camina
masticando cualquier cosa en las
calles de Centro Habana, La Lisa,
El Cerro; las malas palabras y los
golpes forman parte del paisaje,
las aguas albañales abren una
zanja entre dos aceras, y la música
percute compitiendo y ganándole
al silencio o las buenas maneras.
(Guerra, 2016, pp. 18-19; emphasis
mine)
Pour moi, La Havane n’est plus
une capitale—devenue trop
petite, médiocre, sa beauté ne
l’empêchera pas de s’éteindre ; une
ville repose sur les gens qui y vivent
et, entre les ruines et la diaspora,
nous sommes en train de l’achever.
J’ignore qui sont ses habitants, ils
ont l’accent de la côte nord ou du
sud d’Oriente ou bien adoptent une
conduite tribale qui ne ressemble
en rien à celle de la ville qu’on
m’a montrée dans l’enfance. Il y
a une sorte d’haïtianisation dans
le comportement des êtres qui la
constituent. On mange debout,
l’assiette à la main, ou on déambule
en mâchant n’importe quoi dans
les rues du centre de La Havane,
La Lisa, El Cerro ; les insultes et les
coups font partie du paysage, les
eaux usées ouvrent une tranchée
entre deux trottoirs, et la musique
tapageuse l’emporte sur le silence
ou les bonnes manières. (Guerra,
2017, p. 18; emphasis mine)
To me, Havana is no longer a
capital city. It feels small and
mediocre, and its beauty won’t
keep it from extinction. A city is
made of its people, and between
the ruins and the diaspora, we are
wiping this place out. I don’t know
the people who live here anymore;
their accents are from the northern
coast or the south-east, they act
tribally, in ways that have nothing
to do with the city I discovered as
a child. People eat standing up,
plate in hand, or chew and walk on
the streets of downtown Havana,
La Lisa, or El Cerro. Foul language
and violence have become part
of the landscape, open sewage
flows between the sidewalks, and
banging music competes with
silence and good manners, always
emerging victorious.
(Guerra, 2018, p. 6)
socio-communicative value of a translation can
be best located within the contact zone where
the translated text and the various socially driv-
en agencies meet. (Wolf, 2007, p. 1)
In this light, if paratextual matter can be
considered as the meeting point or “contact
zone” between textual and social influenc-
es—as is the case in the French translations of
Guerra’s novels—interlinear, in-text interven-
tions should also be taken into consideration,
as they can also be indicative of what Wolf
calls “socially driven agencies”. A passage
from Obejas’s English translation of Domingo
de Revolución, read alongside the original and
the French translation, helps bring this point
into focus (Example 4).
A parallel reading of the extract in the three
languages allows us to note right away that the
English version is truncated. Whereas the orig-
inal and the French version explicitly equate
societal changes that the narrator observes
in La Habana with a “Haitianization” of the
city, this element is expunged from Revolu-
tion Sunday. The text marketed for the North
American audience therefore presents us with
a compelling instance of textual erasure for
which, at the time of drafting this contribu-
tion, it was not possible to ascertain whether
this sanitization of the text had been conduct-
ed at the hand of a third party editor, by the
translator herself, and/or in compliance with
the author. What this example goes to show,
however, is that, even if the paratextual inter-
ventions found in the French translations of
Guerra’s works remain unparalleled in the
English translations, both Millon and Obe-
jas contribute to setting parameters through
which non-Hispanophone readers access con-
temporary Cuban literature. Obejas’s filtering
of the text is hardly detectable without a par-
allel close reading of source and translated
versions, whereas Millon’s interventions are

Laëtitia Saint-Loubert412Mujeres y traducción en América Latina y el Caribe
much more visible, inviting the reader to learn
more about Cuba and Guerra’s fiction, without
any specific feminist agenda. When asked in-
deed about whether being a woman translator
might have had an impact on her translation
process, Millon simply speaks of “common
sensibilities” that she may share with Guerra
as a woman. Yet, she promptly adds that, to
her, what remains of prime importance is her
deep connection with the text itself and with
the world created by the writer, regardless of
their gender14
. If the questions of gender and
race are therefore not part of Millon’s reflec-
tions on her work as a translator of Guerra’s
works for the Francophone reader 15
—at least
not consciously or insofar as the constraints of
a socially-constructed phone interview may al-
low us to assert—, it goes without saying that
both her and Obejas’s presence in the liminal
and interstitial spaces of the translated text
confirm gendered practices of translator agen-
cy16
, which, as the next section will argue in
the context of (Afro-)Brazilian literature, may
generate new forms of trans-local feminism.
4. Introducing the metropolis to (Afro-)
Brazilian literature—by Anacaona
et aliae
Compared with Stock and Buchet Chastel, An-
acaona Éditions is a very small publishing out-
14 “Ce qui prime, c’est le rapport au texte et à l’auteur.”
[“What matters most is [my] relationship to the text
and with the author.”] Phone interview conducted on
12 December 2020.
15 Françoise Wuilmart, a French translator of German
texts, differs from Millon on that point, and speaks of
the “feminity” or “masculinity” of the “voice”—rath-
er than “content”—of some texts. (Wuilmart, 2009,
pp. 23–39).
16 Barbara Godard’s “womanhandling” comes to mind
here: “Womanhandling the text in translation means re-
placing the modest, self-effacing translation. The trans-
lator becomes an active participant in the creating of
meaning.” (Cited in Arrojo, 1994, p. 151).
let composed of one permanent member, its
founder, Paula Anacaona, and a few freelance
collaborators hired ad hoc for specific projects.
Anacaona Éditions is an activist press that was
created in 2009, has the status of an Ltd., and
is specialized in Brazilian literatures, in the plu-
ral form, a point that the publisher insists on
in her editorial line, which she defines as “ac-
tivist, plural and diverse”17
. Nearly all of the
literature published by the press therefore con-
sists of translated texts all carried out by Paula
Anacaona herself who also wrote her debut
novel, Tatou (2018), a graphic novel, Anacao-
na, l’insurgée des Caraïbes—1492 (2019), and a
children’s book, Gaïa changera le monde (2020),
all featured in the publisher’s catalogue. In ad-
dition to publishing contemporary Brazilian
fiction, Anacaona Éditions has also diversified
its catalogue to essays by major voices from
the Afro-feminist movement in Brazil, among
which Djamila Ribeiro and Joyce Berth. Of
mixed ascendancy herself—“her French moth-
er is white and her South American father is
of African descent”18
—Anacaona translates
“from the Brazilian”—and not from “Portu-
guese (Brazil)”, as most title pages of translat-
ed texts traditionally indicate in France. This
detail might seem anecdotal to the reader, but
it seems to us, rather, that it is indicative of An-
acaona’s editorial activism, which is encapsu-
lated as follows on their website:
À leur création, fin 2009, les éditions Anacaona
étaient axées sur la littérature marginale—une
littérature faite par les minorités, raciales ou so-
cio-économiques. Le talent littéraire est ici mis
au service d’une cause politique ou sociale.
17 See the publisher’s catalogue and motto: <https://
www.anacaona.fr/wp-content/uploads/Catalogue-
2020-pour-site-Web.pdf>. Accessed 01 February 2020.
18 See <http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/05/je-suis-
favela-bringing-brazilian-books-to-the-french-2/>.
Accessed 03 February 2020.

Variable Frames: Women Translating Cuban and (Afro-) Brazilian
Women Writers for the French Literary Market413Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 13, N.°2, 2020, July-December,pp.401-420
[When they were founded at the end of 2009,
éditions Anacaona focused on marginal lite-
rature—a literature written by minorities, be
they racial or socio-economic. Literary talent is
meant to serve a political or social agenda.] 19
From that perspective, most of Anacaona’s
work as a translator contains paratextual el-
ements that aim not only to present aspects
of Brazilian socio-historical, linguistic and
cultural realities deemed to be most likely
unknown to Francophone readers, but also,
within the configuration of its own peripher-
al positioning onto the page—as most of her
translational paratext appears in the form of
footnotes –, to provide a decentered space
of expression for heretofore silenced female
voices and their marginalized (hi)stories. This
can be observed, for example, in Insoumises, a
collection of short stories by Conceição Evar-
isto, in which the author presents the portraits
of thirteen women who share aspects of their
lives with an itinerant story collector who per-
forms, in turn, the role of witness-narrator
for the reader. The last story of the collection
opens with the eponymous character’s in-
troduction to the narrator. As she says, “My
name is Régina Anastacia 1”, the following
footnote appears:
Anastacia, esclave africaine du 18e siècle d’une
grande beauté, refusa les avances sexuelles de
son maître. En guise de punition, elle fut for-
cée de porter un masque de Flandres pendant
toute sa vie. Défigurée, elle mourut dans d’ho-
rribles souffrances. Elle est vénérée au Brésil et
en Afrique.
[Anastacia, an eighteenth-century African sla-
ve of great beauty, resisted her master’s sexual
advances. As a punishment, she was forced to
wear an iron, muzzle-like facemask for the rest
of her life. She died disfigured and in atrocious
19 <https://www.anacaona.fr/les-editions-anacao-
na-une-passerelle-de-diffusion-de-la-litterature-bresil-
ienne-en-france/>. Accessed 30 January 2020.
pain. She is worshipped in Brazil and in Afri-
ca.] (Evaristo, 2018, p. 143)
The translational paratext added by Ana-
caona here first provides some background
information for the reader to understand the
connotation behind the character’s name.
It also serves to inscribe Régina Anastacia
within a genealogy of Afro-Brazilian women
celebrated as key figures who fought against
slavery and oppression, which is immediately
confirmed in the short story itself, when the
narrator comments that she is in the presence
of a legendary queen (“reine”). This, in turn,
brings back to life a long series of other queens
in the narrator’s mind:
Le souvenir d’autres reines me revint : mère
Menininha de Gantois, mère Meninazinha
d’Oxum1
, les Reines de Congadas2
—majestés
que j’avais célébrées pendant mon enfance dans
l’État du Minas Gerais –, Clementina de Jésus,
Dona Ivone Lara, Lia de Itamaracá 3
, Lea Gar-
cia, Ruth de Souza4
, madame Laurinda Nativi-
dade, la professeure Efigenia Carlos, dona Iraci
Graciano Fidelis, Toni Morrison, Nina Simo-
ne… Et d’autres femmes, mes sœurs de l’autre
côté de l’Atlantique, celles que j’ai vues au Mo-
zambique, au Sénégal, dans les villes et les villa-
ges … Et encore d’autres, beaucoup d’autres…
1. Mères de saints, prêtresses dans la religion
afro-brésilienne.
2. La congada est un spectacle culturel et religieux
afro-brésilien, composé de chants et des danses, re-
présentant le couronnement d’un roi du Congo.
3. Trois chanteuses afro-brésiliennes et revendiquant
fortement leur héritage.
4. Deux actrices afro-brésiliennes, faisant figure de
précurseurs.
[The memory of other queens came back to
me: Mother Menininha do Gantois, Mother
Meninazinha de Oxum 1
, the Queens of Con-
gadas 2
—all of whom I had celebrated during
my childhood in the state of Minas Gerais—
Clementina de Jésus, Dona Ivone Lara, Lia de
Itamaracá 3
, Lea Garcia, Ruth de Souza4
, Ms.
Laurinda Natividade, professor Efigenia Car-

Laëtitia Saint-Loubert414Mujeres y traducción en América Latina y el Caribe
los, dona Iraci Graciano Fidelis, Toni Morri-
son, Nina Simone… And other women, my sis-
ters from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean,
the ones I saw in Mozambique, in Senegal, in
cities and villages… And many others, so many
others…
1. Mothers of patron saints, priestesses in the
Afro-Brazilian religion.
2. The congada is an Afro-Brazilian cultural and re-
ligious ceremony composed of songs and dances
meant to enact the crowning of a Congolese king.
3. Three Afro-Brazilian singers who strongly assert
their heritage.
4. Two Afro-Brazilian actresses who are considered
as pioneer figures.
(Evaristo, 2018, p. 144)
When read together, the four footnotes create
a transnational lineage of Afro-descendant
women who have left their stamp on impor-
tant aspects of Brazilian culture and religion
and serve as role models for future genera-
tions as the last note indicates (“faisant figure
de précurseurs”). This sense of genealogy can
also be felt in the publisher’s hybrid catalogue,
which mixes together classics of Brazilian liter-
ature –which include some (re)translations of
Rachel de Queiros and Conceicão Evaristo’s
canonical texts—with works by a new genera-
tion of emerging and more confirmed activist
Afro-women writers20
. Anacaona’s catalogue
features, for example, Jarid Arraes’s first novel,
Dandara et les esclaves libres, in which the pub-
lisher inserts a biographical note placed at the
end of the volume to highlight the editorial
20 In a phone interview conducted with Paula An-
acaona on 22 September 2019, she admitted that she
enjoyed having a hybrid catalogue that brings together
classic Brazilian fiction in her collection Terra, which
features for example works by writers from the Nordeste,
the Northeast region of Brazil, and more contempo-
rary works by writers from the favelas for whom “writ-
ing becomes a weapon”, as the collection Urbana spec-
ifies. See <https://www.anacaona.fr/roman_favela/>.
Accessed 05 February 2020.
process the book had to go through to reach
Francophone readers, whilst revealing some
of the intricacies of the book circuit in the
Caribbean and Latin America:
Prenant de plus en plus conscience des problé-
matiques de race et de genre, elle publie en 2015
au Brésil en édition indépendante Dandara et les
esclaves libres, son premier roman. En moins
d’un an, le tirage est épuisé et l’œuvre est réé-
ditée en 2016 par une grande maison d’édition
brésilienne.
[Becoming increasingly aware of issues of race
and gender, she published her first novel, Danda-
ra and the freed slaves, with a Brazilian indepen-
dent press in 2015. In less than a year, the print-
run was sold out and the book was reprinted in
2016 by an important Brazilian publisher.]
(Arraes, 2018, n/a)
The novel’s original success in Brazil, which
is confirmed here by its passage from a small,
independent press to an established publishing
house due to its first print-run being sold out in
a short time span, further justifies the transla-
tion of the work for the Francophone market,
whilst lending higher credit to the emerging
writer. Seen in this light, the biographical note
can be read alongside Casanova’s aforemen-
tioned arguments on compensation or enrich-
ment for the French literary market, although
it should be noted that the intent here is not
one of cultural appropriation, quite the oppo-
site.21 Most, if not all of Anacaona’s paratex-
tual interventions—particularly as a transla-
tor—rather aim to deconstruct imperial and
colonial narratives from the margins of the
page and the center of the metropolis. This is
particularly manifest in the feminist essays by
Afro-Brazilian women writers that Anacaona
translates and publishes. In La Place de la parole
21 On the specific topic of cultural appropriation, see
Anacaona’s presentation of Rodney William’s L’Appro-
priation culturelle (Anacaona, 2020b).

Variable Frames: Women Translating Cuban and (Afro-) Brazilian
Women Writers for the French Literary Market415Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 13, N.°2, 2020, July-December,pp.401-420
noire, by Djamila Ribeiro (2019), presented as
one of the leading voices of the Afro-Brazil-
ian feminist movement by Anacaona22
, there
are two levels of footnotes: some are authorial,
translated directly from the original Brazilian
version, and others were added by the translator
herself and are clearly signposted in the French
through the use of a systematic “(N. d. T.)”
that comes after each of Anacaona’s liminal
interventions. Here, Evelyn Dueck’s classifi-
cation of paratext, which she divides up into
four categories, can be useful to study the di-
alogue initiated between interventionism and
intersectionality in Anacaona’s translations.
Dueck’s framework has been summed up as
follows by Kathryn Batchelor:
Like Deane-Cox, Dueck argues in favour of
creating additional categories in order to study
the paratexts of translated texts—though ra-
ther than one additional category, Dueck crea-
tes four. These are the péritexte traductif [trans-
latorial peritext], the péritexte traduit [translated
peritext], the épitexte traductif [translatorial
epitext] and the épitexte traduit [translated epi-
texts] ‘see Dueck (2014, 213)). The distinction
between ‘traductif ’ [translatorial] and ‘traduit’
[translated] is made on the basis that the for-
mer encompasses peritextual elements signed
by the translator or publisher, while the latter
22 The blurb on the book cover presents Ribeiro as fol-
lows: “maître en philosophie politique, [Djamila Ribei-
ro] est la référence du mouvement féministe noir, anti-
raciste, pro-lgbt et antimachiste au Brésil. Chroniqueuse
pour la presse et la TV, elle donne aussi des conférences
dans le monde entier. Avec un demi-million de suiveurs
sur les réseaux sociaux, c’est une activiste de poids.”
(Ribeiro, 2019, n/a). Anacaona is also very active her-
self on social media and has promoted Ribeiro’s work,
with her frequent visits to France and meetings with
her readers during literary events via several channels.
See, for instance, <https://www.anacaona.fr/blog/
podcast-feminisme-noir-afro-decolonial-djamila-ribei-
ro-joice-berth/>. Accessed 15 January 2020.
refers to translated source text paratexts (see
Dueck 2014, 213). (Batchelor, 2018, p. 31)
Following Genette’s terminology (1987),
Dueck distinguishes between a third-party pa-
ratextual apparatus that directly frames the text
within the book—what is called “peritext”—
from more peripheral interventions—the “epi-
text”—that are traditionally located outside the
book proper and deemed more commercial.
Drawing on Dueck’s distinction between trans-
latorial paratext and translated paratext, this
article now wishes to turn to the following ex-
tract to gain further insight into the pairing of
authorial and translational footnotes in La Place
de la parole noire:
La penseuse [Gonzalez] confronte également le
paradigme dominant, et utilise dans un grand
nombre de ses textes une langue qui n’obéit pas
aux règles de la grammaire normative, donnant
ainsi une visibilité à l’héritage linguistique des
peuples réduits en esclavage. […] Le langage,
selon la façon dont il est utilisé, peut être une
barrière à la compréhension, et peut créer da-
vantage d’espaces de pouvoir au lieu de parta-
ge, en plus d’être un obstacle parmi d’autres à
une éducation transgressive1
.
Gonzalez a réfléchi à la façon dont les person-
nes qui parlaient « mal » ou « de travers », selon
ce que l’on considère comme la norme érudite,
étaient traitées avec mépris et condescendance,
et a appelé « pretugais »2 la valorisation de la lan-
gue parlée par les peuples noirs africains réduits
à l’esclavage au Brésil.
« C’est drôle comme ils [les membres de la so-
ciété blanche élitiste] se moquent de nous quand
nous disons que nous supportons l’équipe du
Framengo3
. Ils nous qualifient d’ignorants et di-
sent que nous parlons de travers. Mais ils igno-
rent que la présence de ce r au lieu du l n’est rien
de plus que la marque linguistique d’un idiome
africain, dans lequel le l n’existe pas. Alors, qui
est l’ignorant ? Et en même temps, ils affir-
ment adorer la langue dite brésilienne—cette

Laëtitia Saint-Loubert416Mujeres y traducción en América Latina y el Caribe
langue qui avale les r des verbes à l’infinitif, qui
raccourcit você en cê, está en tá, etc.—sans voir
qu’ils parlent le prétugais. »4
1.Voir plus dans : HOOKS, bell. Teaching to Trans-
gress: Education As the Practice of Freedom, 1994.
2. Jeu de mots, contraction de preto (signifiant noir)
et portugais. (N. d. T.)
3. Prononciation erronée selon la norme érudite,
l’équipe s’appelant Flamengo. (N. d. T.)
4. GONZALEZ, Lélia. Op.cit.
[The thinker [Gonzalez] also confronts the
dominant paradigm and uses, in many of her
texts, a language that does not obey grammati-
cal norms, thereby lending visibility to the lin-
guistic heritage of enslaved peoples. […] This
language, depending on how it is used, may
however hinder comprehension and generate
more instances of power rather than equality
in addition to being one more hurdle to a trans-
gressive education1
.
Gonzalez thought about how people who used
a “bad” or “distorted” language, when measu-
red by the yardstick of what we consider the
erudite norm, were treated with contempt and
condescension. She talked about “pretuguese”2
to describe the valorisation of the language
spoken by the peoples of Black and African
descent who had become slaves in Brazil.
“It’s funny how they [the members of the eli-
tist white society] are making fun of us when
we say that we support the Framengo team 3
.
They describe us as ignorant and say that we
don’t speak properly. But they don’t know that
the presence of this r instead of the l is nothing
more than the linguistic feature of an African
language in which the l doesn’t exist. So, who’s
the ignorant one? At the same time, they claim
that they love the Brazilian language, this lan-
guage that gets rid of the r on infinitive verbs,
that shortens você into cê, está into tá, etc.—wi-
thout realizing that they speak pretuguese.4
”
1. See more on that point in: HOOKS, bell. Tea-
ching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of
Freedom, 1994.
2. Pun, contraction of preto (Black) and Portuguese.
(Translator’s note)
3. According to the erudite norm, erroneous pro-
nunciation of the team that is called Flamengo.
(Translator’s note)
4. GONZALEZ, Lélia. Op.cit.]
(Ribeiro, 2019, pp. 23-24)
In this extract, footnotes 1 and 4 correspond to
bibliographical references inserted by Ribeiro
herself in O que é lugar de fala (Editora Letra-
mento, 2017) to crucial works by Afro-femi-
nist thinkers bell Hooks and Lélia Gonzalez.
The second and third footnotes were added by
Anacaona and both consist in elucidating lan-
guage points for the reader: “pretuguais” is ex-
plained as a portmanteau pun between “pre-
to” and “portugais” (“Portuguese” in French),
in which the former is introduced as “mean-
ing black”, while “framengo” is described as
a variational pronunciation of “flamengo”.
Interestingly, Anacaona speaks of an “erro-
neous pronunciation according to an erudite
norm” in footnote 3, which, in the history of
the Caribbean and the Americas, bears spe-
cific resonance (Gentzler, 2008). Similarly, in
her own graphic novel, Anacaona, l’insurgée des
Caraïbes—1492, the translator/author (re)in-
serts a number of indigenous names in her his-
tory of Ayiti and its native peoples and makes
a point, for instance, of explaining Taino terms
to the reader in almost all of her twenty-five
footnotes. On the contrary, Christopher Co-
lumbus—traditionally known as Christophe
Colomb in French history books—becomes
Cristobal Colón in Anacaona, l’insurgée des
Caraïbes—1492, potentially inviting the read-
er to re-assess and deconstruct (phallo)centric
and nationalistic approaches to history on the
one hand, and resist linguistic assimilation on
the other. Much in the same vein, Anacaona’s
paratextual interventions in Ribeiro’s feminist
essay further testify to her activism as a trans-

Variable Frames: Women Translating Cuban and (Afro-) Brazilian
Women Writers for the French Literary Market417Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 13, N.°2, 2020, July-December,pp.401-420
lator/publisher seeking to promote marginal-
ized knowledges. When exploring the title she
chose for her essay and when defining what
she means by “place de la parole”, Ribeiro ar-
gues the following:
[…] il n’existe pas d’épistémologie spécifique-
ment déterminée sur l’expression « place de la
parole » ; en fait, l’origine est imprécise. Nous
pensons que ce concept a surgi à partir de la dis-
cussion autour du feminist standpoint2
, de la diver-
sité, de la théorie raciale critique et de la pensée
décoloniale.
[…] there is no specifically determined episte-
mology for the “location of the spoken”; as a
matter of fact, we cannot trace back its origins.
We believe that the concept was born out of
the discussion around the feminist standpoint2 ,
diversity, critical racial theory and decolonial
thinking. (Ribeiro, 2019, p. 56)
In turn, Ribeiro’s reference to the “feminist
standpoint” leads to the insertion of a footnote
by Anacaona that re-positions the expression
within a non-centric space of expression, in
which the production of feminist knowledge
is concomitant with forging more intersection-
al solidarities:
2. Dans une traduction littérale, le féminisme
du point de vue. Nous préférons « féminisme
de positionnement ». La théorie du position-
nement affirme que le savoir produit dans les
marges et formulé de façon collective est poten-
tiellement plus fiable et susceptible d’accroître
l’objectivité du savoir traditionnel. L’accent est
mis sur la reconnaissance des femmes comme
sujets connaissants. (N.d.T.)
2. A literal translation would be “standpoint
feminism”. We prefer “position feminism”.
Positioning theory argues that the knowledge
produced in the margins and formulated co-
llectively is potentially more reliable and can
be more objective than traditional knowledge.
Here, the emphasis is laid on the recognition of
women as knowledgeable subjects. (Translator’s
note)
(Ibid.)
Here, Anacaona’s definition of the “feminist
standpoint” not only echoes Ribeiro’s own
positioning as an Afro-feminist thinker, it
amplifies her voice and further aims at de-
constructing central (white) narratives within
feminist theories from the very margins of the
text. In that sense, Anacaona’s translatorial
peritext does not merely supplement the (au-
thorial) translated peritext found in Ribeiro’s
essay, neither does it aim to hijack the original
in a provocative way. Rather, her paratextual
strategies remain faithful to the author’s orig-
inal Afro-feminist agenda, inasmuch as they
extend—whilst never displacing—the author’s
original intersectional feminist discourse. Ana-
caona’s paratext is therefore less feminist (in the
provocative sense of the word, as highlighted
by von Flotow and Arrojo) than it is activist. In
that regard, Anacaona’s work offers a unique
trans-local23 platform from which minoritized
stories and theories from the Americas can
travel through the Global North/Global South
axis of cultural circulation without having to
wear a white mask24 or sound French. At its
own level and within its specific location, Ana-
caona’s work therefore comes to embody “the
critical role of translation in the trans/forma-
tion of feminist movements, locally and trans-
nationally, diachronically and synchronically.”
(Castro & Ergun, 2017, p. 2)
23 The term is preferred to “global” in an effort to
preserve and respect the specificities of each original
geo-historical and political site of knowledge pro-
duction. It also aims to echo the work conducted by
Gil-Bajardí et al. (2012) on the glocality of paratextual
elements in translation.
24 In reference to Peau noire, masques blancs (Fanon,
1952).

Laëtitia Saint-Loubert418Mujeres y traducción en América Latina y el Caribe
5. Conclusion
As this article sought to show, Caribbean liter-
ature—or any literature, for that matter—is in-
evitably situated, and even more so when it is
written by women. Its original “location”, be
it Cuba or Brazil, within the global traffic of
cultural goods may vary according to nation-
al, regional or local classifications as well as to
social constructs such as gender and ethnicity,
to name but two. Each time a text circulates in
translation, it enters a new geohistorical are-
na whose access may at times be facilitated, at
others obstructed depending on a number of
variables. In the case of the Americas, Claudia
de Lima Costa observes the following about
the cross-border journeys of feminist theories:
In the context of the Americas, in the interac-
tions between Latina and Latin American fem-
inisms, the travels of discourses and practices
encounter formidable roadblocks and migratory
checkpoints when they attempt to cross borders.
This is in part due to the existence of certain
dominant and exclusionary institutional config-
urations but also to the fact that different histori-
ographies have excluded subjects and subjectiv-
ities from both sides of the North-South divide
(and within each side), making the possibility
of productive dialogue a daunting political and
epistemological challenge. (de Lima, 2014, p. 21)
Arguably, and as seen through the various
paratextual strategies deployed by activist pu-
blisher/translator/writer Anacaona, the trans-
national circulation of (Afro-)feminist theories
towards the metropolis may not always entail
caving in to hegemonic narratives and ethno-
centric, fetishizing tendencies. If, in the main,
the French literary marketplace remains centri-
petal and tends to favour interventionist practi-
ces on the part of translators and publishers, it
nevertheless shows that feminine translational
paratexts are not simply meant as spaces of
compensation, let alone cultural appropriation.
Rather, as the translations carried out by wo-
men like Marianne Millon or Paula Anacaona
have shown, it seems that interventionism in-
creasingly comes to meet up with intersectio-
nality in a combined effort to disrupt (phallo)
centric discourses of subservience and invisi-
bility. Although a parallel study of feminine
paratexts observed in the translation of mar-
ginalized voices from the various (non-white)
francospheres aimed at the specific Cuban and
Brazilian literary marketplaces falls outside the
scope of this article, it would certainly consti-
tute a much-needed, long-awaited echo from
alternative sites of knowledge production and
praxes. Perhaps one might even be as bold as
dreaming to hear such an echo performed in
Tumbao Cubano or Pretoguês.25
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