Books Written by World Languages and Literatures Faculty

The goal is to record most books written or edited by the Department of World Languages and Literatures faculty, instructors, and students. We will start by entering the most recent publications first and work our way back to older books. There is a WMU Authors section in Waldo Library, where most of these books can be found.

With a few exceptions, we do not have the rights to put the full text of the book online, so there will be a link to a place where you can purchase the book.

If you are a faculty member and have a book you would like to include in the WMU book list, please contact wmu-scholarworks@wmich.edu/

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Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again

Shigeru Kayama and Jeffrey Angles

The first English translations of the original novellas about the iconic kaijū Godzilla Godzilla emerged from the sea to devastate Tokyo in the now-classic 1954 film, produced by Tōhō Studios and directed by Ishirō Honda, creating a global sensation and launching one of the world's most successful movie and media franchises. Awakened and transformed by nuclear weapons testing, Godzilla serves as a terrifying metaphor for humanity's shortsighted destructiveness: this was the intent of Shigeru Kayama, the science fiction writer who drafted the 1954 original film and its first sequel and, in 1955, published these novellas. Although the Godzilla films have been analyzed in detail by cultural historians, film scholars, and generations of fans, Kayama's two Godzilla novellas--both classics of Japanese young-adult science fiction--have never been available in English. This book finally provides English-speaking fans and critics the original texts with these first-ever English-language translations of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again . The novellas reveal valuable insights into Kayama's vision for the Godzilla story, feature plots that differ from the films, and clearly display the author's strong antinuclear, proenvironmental convictions. Kayama's fiction depicts Godzilla as engaging in guerrilla-style warfare against humanity, which has allowed the destruction of the natural world through its irresponsible, immoral perversion of science. As human activity continues to cause mass extinctions and rapid climatic change, Godzilla provides a fable for the Anthropocene, powerfully reminding us that nature will fight back against humanity's onslaught in unpredictable and devastating ways.
Rhythm and Free Verse Across the Slavic Belt

Dasha Culic Nisula

Selected by translator Dasha C. Nisula, this unique volume traces the development of modern free verse that extends from Croatia on the Adriatic to Russia in the East. Included are early pieces from the West to East Slavic belt, with the majority of the works focusing on the Russian Whitmanist Vladimir Burich, and the contemporary master of free verse in Russia, Vyacheslav Kupriyanov. This volume captures feeling, essence, rhythm, and depth through superb translations. Also included are an Introduction by the translator, and endworks: “Vladimir Burich Unbound” with Notes, “Reflections on Free Verse” by Arvo Mets, a Vladimir Burich bibliography, Vyacheslav Kupriyanov bibliography with Awards, and Alphabetical listing About the Poets – West Slavic Belt and East Slavic Belt; and a Translator’s Note.
Only Yesterday

Mutsuo Takahashi and Jeffrey Angles

Only Yesterday is a masterpiece by Mutsuo Takahashi, one of Japan's eminent and essential poets. In 2018, soon after Mutsuo Takahashi turned eighty, he published his magnum opus, a collection of poetry entitled Only Yesterday, a work containing 153 poems that showcase the poet's enormous erudition as he revisits the themes he has explored for the last five decades: the nature of beauty, love, homoerotic desire, art, and aging. At the same time, it also includes numerous socially engaged poems inspired by contemporary problems, such as exploitation of the nameless masses and the culture of hero worship. What makes this collection so is that even when talking about contemporary issues, Takahashi weaves into all poems motifs and ideas borrowed from ancient Greek culture, so that Greece serves as the lens through which Takahashi--a lifelong scholar of both modern poetry and classical literature--views the world, even as he writes in an elegant blend of classical and modern Japanese. The result is a dazzling piece of world literature that bridges East and West, new and ancient, all within a witty, idiosyncratic collection that's been translated beautifully by acclaimed translator Jeffrey Angles, whose work earned this book a grant from Japan Foundation. "This collection of poetry is like a sea filled with islands. The sounds of the surging waves of the Japanese language carry us toward the many facets of Greece that Takahashi holds so dear. In the poetic dreams which pass before our eyes one after another, we gaze at leisure upon its landscapes."--Mimi Hachikai, author of The Quickening Field "The most apt metaphor to describe Takahashi's poetic production is the performance of a tightrope walker. With great care and indescribable pleasure, he skillfully crosses the taut rope connecting the vulgar and the sacred, poetic form and free verse, as well as Japanese verse and ancient poetry."--Hisaki Matsuura, (author of Triangle and Le calligraphe) "The god of poetry does descend to us from time to time--that's what I thought as I read this collection of poetry... It is filled with deep emotion and feeling, knowledge and educated culture, and beyond that, the shadow of ideology. Yet what drives the production of Takahashi's poetry is his wit."--Natsuki Ikezawa, author of Still Lives and A Burden of Flowers Poetry, History, Asian & Asian American Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies.
Chinese Calligraphy - The Art of Chinese Characters

Xiaojun Wang
Untamed Shrews: Negotiating New Womanhood in Modern China

Shu Yang

Untamed Shrews traces the evolution of unruly women in Chinese literature, from the reviled "shrew" to the celebrated "new woman." Notorious for her violence, jealousy, and promiscuity, the character of the shrew personified the threat of unruly femininity to the Confucian social order and served as a justification for punishing any woman exhibiting these qualities. In this book, Shu Yang connects these shrewish qualities to symbols of female empowerment in modern China. Rather than meeting her demise, the shrew persisted, and her negative qualities became the basis for many forms of the new woman, ranging from the early Republican suffragettes and Chinese Noras, to the Communist and socialist radicals. Criticism of the shrew endured, but her vicious, sexualized, and transgressive nature became a source of pride, placing her among the ranks of liberated female models. Untamed Shrews shows that whether male writers and the state hate, fear, or love them, there will always be a place for the vitality of unruly women. Unlike in imperial times, the shrew in modern China stayed untamed as an inspiration for the new woman.
The Thorn Puller

Hiromi Itō and Jeffrey Angles

Winner of the Sakutaro Hagiwara Prize and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize Caught between two cultures, award-winning author Hiromi Ito tackles subjects like aging, death, and suffering with dark humor, illuminating the bittersweet joys of being alive. The first novel to appear in English by award-winning author Hiromi Ito explores the absurdities, complexities, and challenges experienced by a woman caring for her two families: her husband and daughters in California and her aging parents in Japan. As the narrator shuttles back and forth between these two starkly different cultures, she creates a powerful and entertaining narrative about what it means to live and die in a globalized society. Ito has been described as a "shaman of poetry" because of her skill in allowing the voices of others to flow through her. Here she enriches her semi-autobiographical novel by channeling myriad voices drawn from Japanese folklore, poetry, literature, and pop culture. The result is a generic chimera--part poetry, part prose, part epic--a unique, transnational, polyvocal mode of storytelling. One through line is a series of memories associated with the Buddhist bodhisattva Jizo, who helps to remove the "thorns" of human suffering.
How the Hedgehog Married: And Other Croatian Fairy Tales = Kako se je Jež Oženio : I Druge Hrvatske Narodne Bajke

Dasha Culic Nisula

Fairy tales occur both in oral and in literary form. The focus in this book has been on preserving the elemental structure of oral tradition without embellishment. But, this is a distinctive literary collection, one that gathers a dozen fairy tales which come from the Croatian national folklore tradition. This is also a contemporary English-language version that respects the ancient Slavic mythology of pre-Christian Croatia. And, through exceptionally communicative translations, Dasha C. Nisula has elevated them to be superlative examples of a how common plots, motifs, and elements of the fairy tale, are their own best explanation - that is, the tale's meaning is contained in the totality of the threadline in the story. And these are 12 great stories! The book also includes a detailed introduction to Croatian fairy tales, and, in a historical and cultural sense, to the wider genre of fairy tales. In this bilingual edition the Croatian and English-in-translation are presented together - accompanied by a selection of original colour artworks by the cover artist, Josip Botteri Dini.
How the Hedgehog Married and Other Croatian Tales

Dasha Culic Nisula

The fairy tale occurs both in oral and in literary form. The focus in the book has been on preserving the elemental structure of oral tradition without embellishment. But this is a distinctive literary collection that gathers a dozen fairy tales which come from the Croatian national folklore tradition, and in this bilingual edition the Croatian and English-in-translation are presented together – accompanied by a 17 original colour artworks by the cover artist, Josip Botteri Dini.
The Language of Feminine Duty : Articulating Gender, Culture, and Covert Policy in Modern Japan

Rika Saito

This book examines "women's speech" as a policy of constructs expressed in official and unofficial discourse from the 1880s to the 1920s in Japan. It analyzes specific language policies that were incorporated through governmental gender policy to perpetuate "women's speech," asymmetrical gendered speech styles and concepts in the Japanese language. It also seeks to develop cross-cultural approaches to language and gender theories initiated in the United States and Europe by proposing new concepts of language policy. This work contributes to ongoing interdisciplinary scholarship on gender, language, and policy by reconsidering the relationship between the Japanese "national language" and "women's speech."
Francophone African Narratives and the Anglo-American Book Market: Ferment on the Fringes

Vivan I. P. Steemers

In recent years, the material circumstances governing the production of African literature have been analyzed from a variety of angles. This study goes one step further by charting the trajectories of a corpus of francophone African (sub-Saharan) narratives subsequently translated into English. It examines the role of various institutional agents and agencies-publishers, preface writers, critics, translators, and literary award committees-involved in the value-making process that accrues visibility to these texts that eventually reach the Anglo-American book market. The author evinces that over time different types of publishers dominated, both within the original publishing space as in the foreign literary field, contingent on their specific mission-be it commercial, ideological or educational-as well as on socioeconomic and political circumstances. The study addresses the influence of the editorial paratextual framing-pandering to specific Western readerships-the potential interventionist function of the translator, and the consecrating mechanisms of literary and translation awards affecting both gender and minority representation. Drawing on the work by key sociologists and translation theorists, the author uses an innovative interdisciplinary methodology to analyze the corpus narratives.
Killing Kanoko; Wild Grass on the Riverbank

Itō Hiromi and Jeffrey Angles

A landmark dual collection by Ito Hiromi, one of the most important contemporary Japanese poets, in a “generous and beautifully rendered” translation by Jeffrey Angles.

Now widely taught as a feminist classic, Killing Kanoko is a defiantly autobiographical exploration of sexuality, community, and postpartum depression, featuring some of Ito’s most famous poems.

Set simultaneously in the California desert and Japan, Wild Grass on the Riverbank focuses on migration, nature, and movement. At once grotesque and vertiginous, this later collection interweaves mythologies, language, sexuality and place into a genre-busting narrative of what it is to be a migrant.
Kitāb Dustūr Al-Gharāʼib Wa-Maʻdan Al-Raghāʼib Wa-Nuṣūṣ Ukhrá: Murāsalāt Muḥammad Al-Bakrī Al-Ṣiddīqī, 1524-1586

Mustafa Mughazy

This is the first publication of the official correspondence of the leading religious scholar and literary figure, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abi al-Hasan al-Bakri al-Siddiqi al-Shafi'i Sibt Al al-Hasan. It provides a window into the world of an influential religious scholar in sixteenth century Cairo and his network of contacts in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. Muhammad al-Bakri corresponded with Sultan Murad III, the grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, and with various officials in Mecca, including the sharifian ruler of Mecca, al-Hasan ibn Abi Numayy. The collection also contains two letters addressed to Sa'di rulers of Morocco and one to the Mughal Emperor Akbar, as well as letters to a variety of lesser Ottoman officials. It is an important source for the history of Ottoman Egypt and the Hijaz.
A Primer for Beginning Russian

Dasha Culic Nisula

A two week introductory course to the teaching of Russian featuring lessons, exercises, and supplements.
Factory girls

Takako Arai and Jeffrey Angles

This first English-language volume from Japanese poet, performer and publisher Takako Arai collects engaging, rhythmically intense narrative poems set in the silk weaving factory where Arai grew up. FACTORY GIRLS depicts the secretive yet bold world of the women workers as well as the fate of these kinds of regional, feminine, collaborative spaces in a current-day Japan defined by such corporate and climate catastrophes as the rise of Uniqlo and the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.
You with Hands More Innocent: Selected Poems of Vesna Parun

Dasha Culic Nisula

Vesna Parun was born in 1922 on the island of Zlarin, on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. She made her literary debut in 1947 with the collection of poems, Zore i vihori (Dawns and Hurricanes), and over the next 60 years went on to publish more than twenty books of poetry, as well as essays, criticism, and children's books. And, although Croatian lyrical is a strong and fruitful tradition, until Vesna Parun, it did not know a single female poet with such developed sensibilities and poetic expressiveness: Parun's modus vivendi was "it is love that makes and keeps us human." And while there are many poets in Croatian literature who have written collections of love poetry, about love of a woman as an object, here we have poems about love with a woman as subject.

The poems in this edition are deeply moving, and great examples of language that exposes Eastern European culture to the English-speaking world—a volume that captures the feeling, essence, rhythm, and depth of the author's words as best as English can through superb translations.
Music is Everything: Selected Poems of Slavko Mihalic

Dasha Culic Nisula and Slavko Mihalic

Slavko Michalic was born in 1928 in Karlovac, Croatia. As a journalist, he moved to Zagreb and there he published his first book of poetry, Komorna muzika (Chamber Music) in 1954.

In his poetry, Mihalic attempted to overcome the absurdity of life with his ardent belief in the humanistic role of the poet. Writing in an idiom remarkable for its simplicity, precision, and lyrical fluency, he was considered outstanding among Croatian ports of his generation, and remarkable among poets on the Continent at large. His work has been translated into many languages, and he is a recipient of numerous literary awards.

These poems are taken from his last three publications: Sabrane pjesme (Collected Poems) 1998. Akordeon (Accordion) 2000, and Močvara (Marsh) 2004. In this edition, one can truly admire and respond to the wondrous nature of the poet.
Unruly Cradle: Poetic Responses to the March 11, 2011 Disasters

Jeffrey Angles

Collection of poetry remembering the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 and the subsequent nuclear disaster. Features poems by panelists at a symposium held March 11, 2016 at Josai University's International Modern Poetry Center: Arai Takako, Ōsaki Sayaka, Shiraishi Kazuko, Takano Mutsuo, Takahashi Mutsuo, Tanaka Yōsuke, Tanikawa Shuntarō, Hirata Toshiko, Tian Yuan, Mizuta Noriko, and Jeffrey Angles. English translations by Jeffrey Angles.
The Book of the Dead

Jeffrey Angles

First published in 1939 and extensively revised in 1943, The Book of the Dead, loosely inspired by the tale of Isis and Osiris from ancient Egypt, is a sweeping historical romance that tells a gothic tale of love between a noblewoman and a ghost in eighth-century Japan. Its author, Orikuchi Shinobu, was a well-received novelist, distinguished poet, and an esteemed scholar. He is often considered one of the fathers of Japanese folklore studies, and The Book of the Dead is without a doubt the most important novel of Orikuchi’s career—and it is a book like no other.

Here, for the first time, is the complete English translation of Orikuchi’s masterwork, whose vast influence is evidenced by multiple critical studies dedicated to it and by its many adaptations, which include an animated film and a popular manga. This translation features an introduction by award-winning translator Jeffrey Angles discussing the historical background of the work as well as its major themes: the ancient origins of the Japanese nation, the development of religion in a modernizing society, and the devotion necessary to create a masterpiece. Also included are three chapters from The Mandala of Light by Japanese intellectual historian Ando Reiji, who places the novel and Orikuchi’s thought in the broader intellectual context of early twentieth-century Japan.

The Book of the Dead focuses on the power of faith and religious devotion, and can be read as a parable illustrating the suffering an artist must experience to create great art. Readers will soon discover that a great deal lies hidden beneath the surface of the story; the entire text is a modernist mystery waiting to be decoded.
These Things Here and Now

Jeffrey Angles

In a time that for many of us in Tokyo and beyond feels far removed from the events of March 11, 2011, when we are not sure how to retain and respect those moments and their aftermath, this collection does exactly that.
Time Differences

Jeffrey Angles

Short story translated into English from Yōko Tawada's collection of short stories: "Umi ni otoshita namae"; first published: Tōkyō : Shinchōsha, 2006.
Becoming Fiction: Reassessing Atheism in Dürrenmatt's Stoffe

Olivia Gabor-Peirce

Becoming Fiction: Reassessing Atheism in Dürrenmatt’s Stoffe sets forth a clarification of the importance of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, modern Swiss dramatist, essayist, novelist and self-proclaimed atheist (1921–1990), and offers new insights into the ways in which his father’s vocation as a Protestant minister, along with Dürrenmatt’s own decision as a young man to pursue a career in writing rather than religion, shaped his world view and, in particular, made necessary a final, desperate attempt to fictionally recast his own life through revisions and amplifications of many of his earlier works when he created his final prose volume, Stoffe. Dürrenmatt devoted immense energy in his writings to wrestling with his father’s God as a way of seeking self-identity. That perceived loss of his father’s esteem became the motor behind his works. After earlier successes, the icy reception of his most ambitious play, Der Mitmacher, in 1976, left the author in such a frustrated state of disappointment that he reached a point of linguistic breakdown. This book contends that Dürrenmatt’s loss of voice forced the author to a new kind of writing: a ‘re-turn’ home. Becoming Fiction explores the damage caused by Dürrenmatt’s inability to express his most central beliefs through the outdated, deceptive modes of linguistic thought and tradition. Consequently, the book argues, at the point of that breakdown of rigid linguistic and theological concepts, a space was forced open, and the Stoffe reveal a Divine presence.
The Georgetown Guide to Arabic-English Translation

Mustafa Mughazy

"Translation is like a reverse-engineering process―whereby, say, we might take apart a clock made of metal parts in order to build a functioning replica made entirely of plastic. Our final product will not look the same as the original clock, and it would be impossible to simply copy the designs of its inner workings, because plastic and metals have very different properties. For example, we cannot make small plastic springs or very thin gears of plastic. But these changes do not matter; the only thing that matters is that our replica will tell the time correctly." ―From the Introduction The Georgetown Guide to Arabic-English Translation is an essential step-by-step, practical manual for advanced learners of Arabic interested in how to analyze and accurately translate nonfiction Arabic texts ranging from business correspondence to textbooks. Mustafa Mughazy, a respected Arabic linguist, presents an innovative, functional approach that de-emphasizes word-for-word translation. Based on the Optimality Theory, it favors remaining faithful to the communicative function of the source material, even if this means adding explanatory text, reconfiguring sentences, paraphrasing expressions, or omitting words. From how to select a text for translation or maintain tense or idiom, to how to establish translation patterns, The Georgetown Guide to Arabic-English Translation is useful both as a textbook and a reference. An invaluable set of appendices offers shortcuts to translate particularly difficult language like abbreviations, collocations, and common expressions in business correspondence, while authentic annotated texts provide the reader opportunities to practice the strategies presented in the book. A must-read for advanced learners of Arabic, this is a book every scholar and graduate-level student will wish to own.
Poems of Hiromi Ito, Toshiko Hirata & Takako Arai

Ito Hiromi Toshiki Hirata, Takako Arari, and Jeffrey Angles

This collection brings together the work of three of Japan's most creative, innovative, and challenging contemporary poets. During the 1980s, Itō and Hirata quickly emerged as major new poetic voices, breaking taboos and writing about sexual desire, marital strife, pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in such direct and powerful ways that they sent shockwaves through the literary establishment. In recent years, Arai has emerged as a leader of the next generation of poets, writing about working-class women and their fates within the world of global capital. All three poets have rejected the stayed, polished language that dominates poetic discourse and instead have favored dramatic voices that are raw, powerful, and frequently quite dark. Socially engaged and poetically aware, these three are poised to become some of the most important poetic voices of the twenty-first century.
Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End

Tamaki Saito and Jeffrey Angles

This is the first English translation by Jeffrey Angles of a controversial Japanese best seller that made the public aware of the social problem ofhikikomori, or “withdrawal”—a phenomenon estimated by the author to involve as many as one million Japanese adolescents and young adults who have withdrawn from society, retreating to their rooms for months or years and severing almost all ties to the outside world. Saitō Tamaki’s work of popular psychology provoked a national debate about the causes and extent of the condition.
Twelve Views from the Distance

Jeffrey Angles and Mutsuo Takahashi

From one of the foremost poets in contemporary Japan comes this entrancing memoir that traces a boy’s childhood and its intersection with the rise of the Japanese empire and World War II. Originally published in 1970, this translation is the first available in English.

In twelve chapters that visit and revisit critical points in his boyhood, Twelve Views from the Distancepresents a vanished time and place through the eyes of an accomplished poet. Recounting memories from his youth, Mutsuo Takahashi captures the full range of his internal life as a boy, shifting between his experiences and descriptions of childhood friendships, games, songs, and school. With great candor, he also discusses the budding awareness of his sexual preference for men, providing a rich exploration of one man’s early queer life in a place where modern, Western-influenced models of gay identity were still unknown.

Growing up poor in rural southwestern Japan, far from the urban life that many of his contemporaries have written about, Takahashi experienced a reality rarely portrayed in literature. In addition to his personal remembrances, the book paints a vivid portrait of rural Japan, full of oral tradition, superstition, and remnants of customs that have quickly disappeared in postwar Japan. With profuse local color and detail, he re-creates the lost world that was the setting for his beginnings as a gay man and poet.