Ekomo s interventions 179

city to the mission and the mission to the v illage, crossing ethnic and linguistic boundaries] (Lopez Rodriguez 125).

A complex relation to frontier and identity is mirrored in the process of composition. [n writing Ekomo, it was not the Fang language, her mother tongue, that Maria Nsue chose, but rather Spanish, the dominant language of the former colonial power.10 It was not in Equatorial Guinea but in Madrid that she entrusted its publication to the Uni versidad Nacional de Educaci6n a Distancia, in 1985, with a reprint- unauthorized - according to the author- in the subsequent months. From that moment onwards, the author relates, her rela tionship to the novel has continued to change th rough an indeterminate series of processes of belonging and detachment, marked by the numerous interventions of copy editors, publishing houses, new prologues and more-or-less-scholarly introductions, book covers, and marketing and distribution strategies. Some of these interventions have also been characterized by- although not limited to- a concern with linguistic "correctness" and normativity. It is in this context that I re fer here to "i nterventions" as a set of practices, of reading and translating (including its Latin etymological charge of trans-latus), which are sensitive to the inherently political d imensions of language and meaning. These interventions are also, by extension, linked to a po litics of language and appropriation that is not reduced to textual operations, for the work encompasses textual circulations as well, including crossings from Africa to Spain, France, and beyond.

The chain of interventions has yet not ended; the publication of a translation of the novel into English is under preparation at present in the United States. As one of the scholars involved in th is project, I am keenly aware of the dimensions of translation- the act o f reading, thinking, transferring and ultimately (re) producing- as a deeply political and historical task, necessarily involving issues of power, ideology, and mediation.11 The problematics of translation are, by no means, restricted to language. The dangers are intrinsic in the way that translators intend to market a project to potential readers, and to prospective publishers. The preparation of an English edition of Ekomo for a commercial publishing house, aimed for college adoption purposes, poses pressing questions about border crossings in the act of translation, entailing not just geographical, economic, political and cultural preknowledge, but also other complex d imensions that are assumed in the readership. 12 What might a text such as Ekomo mean in English that is different

10 It is, of course, important to avoid an essentialized condition of the "native speaker." Languages are not one 's own: global languages are constitutively intercultural, and "former colonial and now so-called global languages, such as French, English, and Spanish, are no longer simply national" (Conley 2 1 ). This element, however, complicates the translation process from the start. As Maria Tymoczko claims, there are many similarities between postcolonia l writing and literary translation: both are affected by the process of relocation.

11 "Translations are always embedded in cultural and political systems, and in history" (Bassnett and Trivedi 6).

12 For a theorization on border crossing in the Spanish-speaking context see the introduction to Sampedro Vizcaya and Doubleday (2008).

•orary Spanish Texts

t mean to think about translation, the .exts, beyond the colonial paradigm published, and disseminated? mderscores the primal and formative have been born in jail, in 1948, in the ned for resisting the authority of the c group, she is the only child of Jose >endence leader (known by locals as 1 Spanish colonial rule, on October :al appointments, in the Ministry of s Ambassador to Ethiopia, under the 1e country's first President. Macias was deposed on August 3, 1979, by 1ro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who Jinea. Macias Nguema's regime was described by Donato Ndongo as "la 9), by Samuel Decalo as reflecting a Sundiata ( 1990) as a form of "state

{assassinated on February 4, 1976. 14

; of European colonial cartographers n in which Maria Nsue would spend 1e northeast comer of the Equatorial rdering Cameroon to the north, and -lere, at the age of eight, Maria Nsue ily temporarily assigned to the local

cover of the 2007 Spanish edition of onal interviews that I conducted with her me that 1948 was the year of her birth.

)rial Guinea (Ndongo and Ngom 2000, e a biographical note indicating that she is introductory essay to the first edition her birth. The first published anthology eloquent metaphor: "naci6 alla cuando

n when the century was folding in half]

Jose Nsue Angiie Osa, observes: "Named med by Macias' sbirros [cops] at the end ntially correct, the chronology is slightly on on Jose Nsue's wife and daughter: "In hnical director of the State Secretariat for fod to study journalism and is becoming

iota during the colonial period, and the nference and the Treaty of Paris) leading f, see Fernandez Duro ( 1900).

Ekomo s interventions

mission, and it was by this family that she would later be taken to Madrid (the colonial metropolis). As a young woman, she would study journalism and music, spending a great part of her youth under the Francoist regime. She would return to Equatorial Guinea in her twenties, shortly afier the country's independence, in 1971. Having been detached from her roots for so long, it was as the result of the reencounter with her grandfather, Martin Angue Osa- a respected woodcarving artist and owner of a relatively prosperous coffee plantation in Bidjabidjan that she reestablished an emotional and cognitive connection with her Fang cultural heritage, language, oral traditions, and practices. 16 She then moved to Malabo, the newly renamed capital, and was appointed to a government position in the Secretariat of Women's Affairs. 17 Later she worked for the publication Diario Ebano. 18 It was here, at her office in what was at the time the headquarters of Ebano in Malabo, that she conceived and wrote the novel that has widely been perceived as her masterpiece, Ekomo. 19 Asked in a recent interview to describe the period of her life during which she wrote this novel, she responded: "Muy emocionante. Era yo muy joven, en un pais mas joven aun. Guinea se preparaba para resurgir entre sus cenizas y nosotros, los guineanos, estabamos con ella. Ha sido la etapa mas emocionante de mi vida" [Very exciting. I was very young, in a country that was even younger. Guinea was preparing to rise from the ashes, and we, the Guineans, were with her. It was the most exciting stage of my life] (Fra-Molinero 20 I 0).

Ekomo narrates the epic joumey,20 through the forest, of a young, recently married Fang woman, Nnanga Aba'a, accompanying her husband, whose name is Ekomo.21 He has a potentially fatal infection-a gangrenous leg-and the two

16 On the woodcarving and artistic heritage preserved and transmitted by the family in Bidjabidjan, which was inherited by Maria Nsue's uncle, Felipe Osa Angiie (her father's younger brother), see the suggestive article by Valenciano Mafle and Picornell Gelabert (2009), describing the "museo sin vitrinas en la selva ecuatorial" [museum without glass cabinets in the equatorial jungle], which he maintains as an example of historical continuity through processes of patrimonialization.

17 The city had been named Santa Isabel during Spanish colonial rule; the first elected President, Macias Nguema, renamed it Malabo in his attempt to replace European names with autochthonous ones.

18 Founded in 1939, during the colonial period, as Ebano: Semanario de la Guinea Espanola [Ebano, Weekly Newspaper of Spanish Guinea], this publication changed frequency from weekly to daily to monthly during certain periods, and altered its name to Diario Ebano [Ebano Newspaper] afler the country's independence.

19 The building is a colonial landmark; inaugurated in 1942 as the lnstituto Cardenal Cisneros, today it is occupied by the Centro Cultural Ecuatoguineano.

20 Limonta rightly states that "Ekomo esta dispuesta a[ ... ] incursionar en la epica, en la novela de iniciaci6n, generos que [ ... ] evitan las escritoras por cstar demasiado unidos a las 'provincias del patriarcado'" [Ekomo is prepared to[ ... ) make incursions into epic, into the initiation novel, genres which [ ... ] female authors avoid because they arc too closely associated with the 'provinces of patriarchy'] (93).

21 'The word Ekomo is, for Zielina [Limontc), not as much a character but a place, a mythological space in which all the characters move" (Ugarte 147).

Ekomo s Interventions 185

This, it is worth noting, was the first university ever established in Equatorial Guinea, a branch of the Madrid-based UNED, following the signing of the "Tratado de Amistad y Cooperaci6n entre la Republica de Guinea Ecuatorial y Espana del 23 de octubre de 1980" [Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the Republic of Equatorial Guinea and Spain from October 23, 1980).29 Granados proudly notes on his faculty profile of the univers ity portal that he was the editor and author of the prologue of " la primera novela escrita en ecuatoguineano" [the first novel written in ecuatoguineano ], Ekomo, as well as of El hombre y la costumbre [Man and Custom] ( 1990), by Pancracio Esono Mitogo, " la primera obra de teatro de aquel pa is" [the first play from that country]. ln the prologue for Esono Mi togo's play, Granados celebrates the role his institution has played in the publication of the two works, while continuing to remind the reader of linguistic otherness, coining a new category of what he terms " la variedad ecuatoguineana del espafiol" [the Equatoguinean variant of Spanish]:

a la Univers idad a Distancia le cabe el honor de haber ed itado la primera novela de Guinea Ecuatoria l, escrita en la variedad ecuatoguineana del espafiol, no por "descuido" dialectal sino con voluntad puramente artistica. Siempre en vanguardia en todo lo referente a lo ecuatoguineano, la UNED da ahora la primera comedia de Guinea Ecuatorial, con rasgos asimismo ecuatoguineanos. Y yo recibo la alegria de presentar al autor y su obra.

[the Universidad a Distancia has the honor of having edited the first novel from Equatorial Guinea, written in the Equatoguinean variant of Spanish, not because of dialectal carelessness but through pure artistic deli beration. Always at the vanguard of every aspect of Equatoguinean culture, the UNED now offers the fi rst play from Equatoria l Guinea, with its equally Equatoguinean features. And I have the pleasure of presenting the author and his work]. (Granados, "Pr61ogo" 6)

Granados's most invasive remarks come not from the prologue to Pancracio Esono's play, but from the one that he wrote for Maria Nsue's novel. Unashamedly, he makes use of almost 50 percent of the prologue's space to display a list of the novel's grammatical "errores," assuring the potential metropolitan reader that "Maria Nsue ha corregido en su novela los errores de dispersion del sistema vocalico de l espafio l guineano, por eso no aparece la /el cerrada" [Maria Nsue has corrected in her novel the errors in the dispersion of the vocalic system, so the closed /e/ does not appear] (I 0). And, in reference to the consonantic system, he writes:

lo mas notable es la neutra lizaci6n entre Ir/ y tr/ en posici6n intervocalica. Dicha neutralizaci6n se refleja en la escritura por medio de innumerables confusiones. En un recuento provisional, encontre en Ekomo mas de cincuenta casos:

29 The official web page of the UNED records its institutional history: <http:// porta l.uned .es/ portal/ page? _ pageid=93 , 12 17 0 3 6,93 _ 2055334 0 &_d ad= po rta l&_ schema=PORTAL>.

Ekomo s Interventions 187

minimo resentimiento, ni trata ninguna cuesti6n politica de caracter panfletario, porque la obra cumple una de las caracteristicas de la literatura guineana escrita: la ausencia de sentimientos anticolonialistas" [there is not the slightest resentment in the novel, nor does it address any po litical question in a partisan way, because the work embodies one of the characteristics o f written Guinean literature: the absence of anticolonial sentiments] ( 13).

"Granados' introductory remarks are the best example of how political and cultural discourse produced, reproduced and even archived empire, not j ust in pre-Francoist and Francoist Spain, but also in post-Francoist and postco lonial Equatorial G uinea" (Sampedro Vizcaya 2008: 352-3) . The novel, then, has been tampered with, altered , subject to intervention; yet the politics of colonial writing do not escape the reader, and the prologue proves itself discursively more powerful than its author intended, although for the opposite reasons. When Granados claims that "considero una joya la novela de Maria Nsue; en un medio lingiiistico hostil , ha escrito la narraci6n guineana mas importante en lengua espafiola" [I consider Maria Nsue's novel to be a jewel: in a hostile linguistic medium, she has written the most important Guinean narrative in Spanish] ( I 0), he is in truth vindicating not just postcolonial linguistic territoriality, but the continui ty of a postimperial project through linguistic and literary manifes tations, even while curtailed and intervened from the onset.

Starting in the early 1980s, and coinciding with the country's resurgence to a state o f quasi-normality after the Francisco Macias dictatorship, and the reestablishment of connections from the outside world, academic research projects that focused on Equatorial Guinea- with multiple disciplinary approaches-began to emerge. Among the first (not surprising ly, as they are on the surface less politically invested) was a sustained and systematic flurry of linguistic studies on the various specificities o f the languages spoken in Equatorial Guinea, although the emphasis lay primari ly on the use of Spanish in contact with the local languages. As a result came the publications by German de Granda, John Lipski, Antonio Q uilis, Celia Casado Fresnillo, and Justo Bolekia Boleka among others.30 Vicente Granados's contributions to this field were, as might have been expected, "circumscribed within the notion of ' incorrect' usage rather than the potential formation of a uniquely Guinean dialect of Spanish" (Lipski 85). In short, the same claims that he had made in Ekomo's prologue were applied to the field at large. John Lipski, perhaps the most personally distanced from the subject of study among the scholars, responded directly to Granados's interpellation on Ekomo with the authori ty of one linguist to another: "The novel is not written in 'Guinean Spanish,' but is composed in literary Spanish devoid ofobvious regional features except for Fang names and a few terms for Guinean flora and fauna. The characters' dialogues are set in unremarkable Spanish, presumably because they would be fluently conversing in Fang, thei r native language" (86). While Lipski 's appra isal may be linguistically accurate, his observation that the novel is "devoid of obvious regional features" calls to mind other adscriptions in regards to both

30 See Lipski, "The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea," for a fu ll bibliographic summary.

Ekomo s Interventions 189

is pressing. Works in translation always- and inevitably- have a life o f their own. Divorced from the language in which they were originally written, and the country in which they were originally published, they are conditioned- although not determined- by the new cultural and geopolitical context in which they are to be permanently shaped and reshaped. Yet given Ekomo's embodiment of female resistance to both ethnic tradition and colonialism, how can this English translation be useful in attempting to continue this interpellation? Responsive to the pitfalls of co lonial inscription, my co-translator and I have asked Maria Nsue herself what Spanish words such as selva, curandero, or tribu- terms, images, and cultural markers that reach us substantially resignified by the colonial process, as well as by postcolonial sensibilities-signi fy for her in Fang. Furthermore, what does she intend in her deployment of an array of similar concepts heavily marked by the colonial ethnographic tradition of the West? I am aware that perhaps more relevant than my own personal, contingent, answers to these questions might be the invitation 1 make here to reflect on the questions themselves, as they enable a di fferent, relational, approach to the text and its circulation. However, some textual decisions are inevitably in order. Footnotes in our translation are deliberately intended to minimize interference with the reading (we therefore avoid plot interpretation, for instance) and instead offer occasional cultural, local, or historical po inters that may provide add itional context for the novel. Our translation of Ekomo will seek to foster a community with foreign cultures and cross-continental communication through the domestic inscription of the foreign, even if we are aware that this will perhaps always be "partial, both incomplete and inevitably slanted towards the receiving situation" (Venuti 18). The hope, at the very least, is that- as Bernard McGuirk has written- "transla tion intervenes [ ... ] as an intensifier, of force, contempt, sex, obscenity, transgression" (396-7). This article aspires to o ffer a preliminary reflection on, rather than a complete resolution of, the problematic interventions generated when texts such as Ekomo cross the divides between Equatorial Guinea, Spain and, in the near future, the Eng lish-speaking world.

Works Cited

Aponte Ramos, Lo la. " Los territo rios de la identidad. Transgenero y transnacionalidad en Ekomo de Maria Nsue Ang i.ie." La recuperaci6n de la memoria. Creaci6n cultural e identidad nacional en la literatura hispano-negroafricana. Ed. M ' bare Ngom. Alcala de Henares: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad, 2004. 101- 13. Print.

Balboa Boneke, Juan. El reencuentro. El retorno de f exiliado. Malabo: Ediciones Guinea, 1985. Print.

Bassnett, Susan, and Harish Trivedi. " Introduction: Of Colonies, Cannibals and Vernacular." Translation: Theory and Practice. Ed. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi. London and New York: Routledge, 1999: 1- 18. Print.

Boletin Oficial de f Estado. "Tratado de Amistad y Cooperaci6n entre la Republica de Guinea Ecuatorial y Espana, de 23 de octubre de 1980." <http://www.boe. es/buscar/doc.php?id= BOE-A-198 1-1 6874>. Web. 20 Jan. 201 3.