Shearsman Books

Paperback, 80pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781905700363

Analfabeto / An Alphabet was written in Recife, Brazil, and Brooklyn, New York. Part dictionary, part travel diary, part historical record, it crosses genre boundaries narrating a story of fragmented shifts in identity — cultural, gendered and sexual. It addresses the complications of translation, not only linguistic translation, but also the multiple ways we translate ourselves when we are away from whatever we might call "home."

"Tender Buttons meets Two Serious Ladies: in this beautiful debut,
Ellen Baxt deftly and musically portrays the manifold opportunities
for disorientation that obtain only when one is dwelling, for the first
time, in a foreign tongue. Tragicomically blue, her ravishing linguistic
experiment has the enigmatic power of a Josef Sudek photo; she lifts
the postcard and the primer to new, crypto-nostalgic heights."
— Wayne Koestenbaum

Excerpt:

"Phonics means that grapes is not grasps or gasps or grates or graze. When teaching the word lasts, make the sound of cymbals. Compromisso is appointment; oficina, garage; sensible, sensitive. The Botanic Garden is fifty-four hectares. Being unshaven at the beach, I call attention to the act of shaving, though the act of shaving is what I haven't done. A fruit is fuzzy but an animal is furry. An orange has a rind; a tomato, a skin; a banana, a peel. We eat cucumber seeds but not watermelon seeds. In Hortifruti, cantaloupe is melão americano. When I write I think I've made a noise. Looking up, the quiet is startling."

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