The Smithian

Haruki Murakami has signed a deal for the English translation of “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage”…[it] sold over a million copies in just over a week…in Japan…

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On April 25, after weeks of international campaigns and fundraisers, the executive management of the Independent…pulled the plug on its operations, days earlier than scheduled…Opened four years ago as an English language division to privately owned Arabic daily El Masry El Youm, the newspaper was one of few that chronicled the real beginnings of the Egyptian revolution…

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‘Full-blown magic realism, like in the Latin American boom of literature of the ’70s and ’80s, is not fashionable anymore, but elements of it are still present in novels all over the world, even in English; think Salman Rushdie and Toni Morrison, for example. Magic realism is not a literary trick for me. I accept that the world is a very mysterious place.’ — Isabel Allende

…I remember feeling, and understanding, the fear that drove some parents in the schools to wish to ban The Color Purple. I realized, given the sexism in our culture, that some of the complainers were probably people who had at some time sexually abused children.  Or, they had been sexually abused themselves and could not bear thinking about it, as adults. There were also those who felt the language, or way of speaking, of their parents and grandparents would best be forgotten, since it was not “correct” standard English speech. I actually felt a lot of compassion for everyone. Black men had a fear they were being trashed in the character of Mister and had no faith that he could redeem himself.  Which he does, by novel’s end. The lesbian nature of Shug and Celie’s relationship was especially hard to bear for people who believe sex, like marriage, should only occur between a woman and a man. It was a lot. And yet, for me, those considerations were all secondary to the overarching expression in the book of spirituality and the assurance found by many of the characters that the divine is all around us in Nature.

more, from Alice Walker in a new interview at Guernica.

…2012 is shaping up to be a big year for Hispanic news outlets, with Univision and ABC News preparing to launch a new English-language cable news channel, and  Telemundo and Univision preparing to cover the 2012 election. This Summer, however, there will be a new player in the fast-growing field, as News Corp. launches its Spanish-language broadcast channel, MundoFox.

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The show, which will be shown on Telemundo.com, will feature actors from Spanish-language telenovelas and English-language reality shows in what the network is calling its “first-ever bilingual branded entertainment series.” Mia, the lead character’s name, is also a play on words for the type of female viewer the show is intended to attract—the Modern Independent Achiever. “The MIA essentially is the new Latina…she’s career-driven, she’s very proud, she’s an achiever.”

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art: Jacqueline Márquez, who portrays “Mia.”

Telemundo has long trailed its rival Univision in their competition for Hispanic television viewers in the United States. But as the number of second- and third-generation Hispanic-Americans skyrockets, the perennial runner-up is embracing a new strategy—English-language subtitles and Spanglish—to attract deep-pocketed viewers and the advertisers who covet them.

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Make room for Hinglish.