The Turkish-language release of Hanne Blank's Virgin: The Untouched History is a politically engaged translation aimed at disrupting Turkey's heteropatriarchal virginity codes. In Virgin Crossing Borders, Emek Ergun maps how she crafted her rendering of the text and draws on her experience and the book's impact to investigate the interventionist power of feminist translation. Ergun's comparative framework reveals translation's potential to facilitate cross-border flows of feminist theories, empower feminist interventions, connect feminist activists across differences and divides, and forge transnational feminist solidarities. As she considers hopeful and woeful pictures of border crossings, Ergun invites readers to revise their views of translation's role in transnational feminism and examine their own potential as ethically and politically responsible agents willing to search for new meanings. Sophisticated and compelling, Virgin Crossing Borders reveals translation's vital role in exchanges of feminist theories, stories, and knowledge.
Emek Ergun is an associate professor of women's and gender studies and global studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the coeditor of Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives and Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, fifth edition
Foreword AnaLouise Keating Preface: Traveling (with) Books Acknowledgments Introduction: Translation in Feminism / Feminism in Translation Comparative Geohistories of Virginity Re-visioning Virginity in the Rewriting of Virgin Remaking Feminist Subjectivity in Feminist Translation Local Politics of Feminist Translation Feminist Translation as a Praxis of Cross-Border Interconnectivity Imagined Translational Feminist Communities Conclusion: Translation in Transnational/Transnational in Translation Notes Bibliography Index
"A beautifully written book that takes the reader on a journey, beginning with the author's interest in the topic through her struggles to create a translation that will empower and change the lives of her readers and the way they see the world. Ergun makes a convincing case for how essential translation is for transnational feminism and provides a unique, behind-the-scenes look at what translations can do. This book left me feeling inspired and even hopeful--a rare experience in these troubling times."--Kathy Davis, author of The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels across Borders
