Issue forty seven of The Attention Span Newsletter was published on 18 February 2026.
Every month, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
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LOVE OUR PEOPLE LIKE YOU LOVE OUR FOOD the mural says, listing the elements needed in the manner of ingredients in a recipe: accountability, respect, understanding, love, empathy and listening. Produced by the Mandarin Institute and artist Vida Kuang in 2021, this mural in Chinatown San Francisco is a call to action for people to examine how they’ve consumed Asian food and culture, and actively acknowledge the labour, history and colonization of Asian peoples. “Love our people like you love our food” is a recipe for solidarity. It also includes all the ingredients for translation.
I wanted to write a lengthy essay about the recent SAIL event in Amsterdam—[…] about the wounds woven into all our histories, and about how we search for beauty in a broken world—how violence and beauty coexist in that fragile space.
But then summertime sadness arrived, carried by shifting winds: warmth fading into chill. We’ve reached that moment when you wrap a scarf around your neck yet still insist on one last ice cream of the season, holding onto the hope of one more outdoor swim before it all disappears. For me, it always brings a deep melancholy. The essay on decolonising SAIL will have to wait…
I have always loved the ocean; wide, wild, an endless dreamscape of possible escape. Filled with beauty, violence and mystery, the ocean has been carrying humanity’s fears and hopes for millennia. Yet, we know so little about it. Scientists still make discoveries about its habitat. Our Western societies have yet to truly face their own history of crossings in the name of God and Gold. There is always the greater narrative and the personal stories. Both are entwined. …
I had been working for more than a year on this collage.
I made it meticulously with beautiful materials: Pink and gold Japanese paper. A pressed flower I had gathered years ago from a poet’s garden. Fragile materials. I used special glue to bring them together. Archival, naturally, promising to last a lifetime.
I had also applied gold leaf, forming little islands across the layers of paper. A process that demands care and patience. Care, I do have a lot of. Patience, not so much.
My piece was spectacular. Ready to be framed. Perfection.
I destroyed it. That one morning, I felt the need to undo it.
In Littérature et Révolution, writer Joseph Andras and writer and sociologist Kaoutar Harchi invite us into a nuanced and caring 240-page conversation on the role of political engagement in literature. The exchange starts with the premise that all writers are engagés, only some writers’ political engagement is to the world as it is, while others’ lies in changing it, with varying degrees of success. It fascinates me that the English translation of the French word “engagé” requires the addition of the word “politically” to convey the same meaning. In engagé, the political dimension is inherent. Yet, as the writers highlight, political engagement isn’t always directed toward social justice and equality.
