Two authors from the Upper Valley have published new works drawing from their lived experiences in different parts of the world. Ivy Schweitzer's poetry collection 'Dividing Rivers' explores her identity and biases, while Ezzedine C. Fishere's novel 'Nightfall in Cairo' reflects Egypt's political unrest. Both books highlight the power of literature to convey personal and cultural narratives.
Ivy Schweitzer, a retired English and creative writing professor at Dartmouth College who lives in Norwich, released 'Dividing Rivers: Poems' last August. The memoir in verse traces her life from childhood in Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay Jewish neighborhood to her decades in the Upper Valley. It reckons with her identity as a white, Jewish woman and her internalized biases against people of color, using poetry to bring unconscious prejudices to the forefront.
The cover features an image referencing kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold-laced lacquer to make breakage visible. Schweitzer, 74, began writing the poems in summer 2020 while on her sailboat in Penobscot Bay, shortly after George Floyd's murder. One key piece, 'Whiteness: A Checklist of Excuses,' includes lines such as 'Feared when I passed a dark man on a street' and 'Cried when friends pointed out my racist language.' She presents it as two versions: the original crossed out and a rewritten one, emphasizing an iterative process of self-examination.
'I had to eventually rewrite that entire poem and rethink my entire relationship to whiteness, but I really didn’t want to throw the first poem away and whitewash it, whitewash myself,' Schweitzer said. She added, 'I’m crossing it out because I really don’t want to embrace it anymore, but I’m going to let you see it so you can see where I came from, and what was so problematic.'
Ezzedine C. Fishere, who teaches Middle East politics at Dartmouth and lives in Hanover, is releasing the English edition of his 2017 novel 'Nightfall in Cairo' on March 1. Originally written in Arabic, the fiction draws from his experiences as a former diplomat in Egypt during the early 2010s political upheaval, including his participation in the uprising against the authoritarian regime.
The story follows Amal, a lawyer released from prison after years of detention and ordered to leave Egypt, who asks Omar to recount events during her absence. 'Literally everybody, regardless of political affiliations, was changed by the uprising,' Fishere said. He moved to the Upper Valley in 2016 for a job at Dartmouth and described his first year there as 'probably one of the best years of my life.'
Fishere founded Commonsense House, a publishing imprint for translated works, a few months ago to better represent popular Arabic literature. He noted challenges in translation: 'When you translate, in a way you rewrite the novel. It’s not just a language issue, it’s a cultural issue.' He believes author involvement ensures fidelity: 'If the author can accompany this movement, I think it’s a better guarantee of transferring whatever the writer had in mind.'