JD Pluecker
Photo by Jessica Alvarenga
Bio
JD Pluecker is a language worker who writes, translates, organizes, interprets, and creates. Pluecker’s undisciplinary work is informed by non-normative poetics, language justice, radical aesthetics and politics, and cross-border/cross-language cultural production. They have translated numerous books from the Spanish, including most recently Gore Capitalism (Semiotext(e), 2018) and Antígona González (Les Figues Press, 2016). Their book of poetry and image, Ford Over, was released in 2016 from Noemi Press. In 2010, they co-founded the language justice and linguistice experimentation collaborative Antena Aire with Jen Hofer, and in 2015 they co-founded the local social justice interpreting collective Antena Houston. Pluecker has exhibited artistic work at Blaffer Art Museum, the Hammer Museum, Project Row Houses, and more.
Project Description
To support the translation from the Spanish of the novel Garbage by Mexican author Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny. Aguilar Zéleny (b. 1973) lives on the El Paso/Ciudad Juárez border where she has coordinated writing workshops for women who have experienced violence, and in 2016 she founded Casa Octavia, a small residency program for women and LGBTQ writers. Her novel Garbage interweaves the voices of three women with connections to the municipal garbage dump of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico—a teenager abandoned by her mother figure at the dumpsite, a scientist doing research on the residents of the dump, and a transwoman living nearby who is the matriarch of a group of sex workers. Together these characters form a singular narrative that presents the complexities of survival and joy, love, and violence in the difficult terrain of the border between the United States and Mexico. Garbage has yet to be translated into English.
Over the last 20 years, I have lived my life on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, living and working in Texas, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Baja, California. I am connected to the region deeply by bonds of friendship and family, and my appreciation for the beauty and the difficulties of life in the region has led me to my work as a translator. I am all too often angered and frustrated by representations of these border spaces by individuals who have spent very little time in relation to these landscapes, cities, and communities; their representations often re-affirm stereotypes and misportray the subtle textures of life along the border. I have made it a focus of my work to attempt to translate writing that upends these unfortunate portrayals and that pushes U.S. readers to re-evaluate their views. For this reason, I have chosen to translate books like Tijuana writer Sayak Valencia’s Gore Capitalism (Semiotexte, 2018) and Antígona González (Les Figues Presse, 2016). I am excited to be able to add Aguilar Zéleny’s book Basura to this list of books by queer authors from Northern Mexico; each one of them challenges stereotypical and damaging representations of their region and tells stories that are crucial for re-orienting the dialogue in the U.S. about the southern border and the people living in the crossroads.