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A Barcode Scanner

Subtitle
Translated from the Arabic by Bryar Bajalan and Shook

Author Zêdan Xelef

In stark, contemporary language that bears the influence of the Êzîdî oral tradition, the poems in Zêdan Xelef’s debut offer a searing indictment of the commodification and dehumanization of the displaced. Translated from the Arabic by Bryar Bajalan and Shook, "A Barcode Scanner’s" wide cast features IDP camp managers and UN representatives alongside literary forebears like Anne Sexton and pornstar Sasha Grey, in poems that recount tragic camp fires, text message romances, and the drudgery of everyday life for the survivors of Daesh’s 2014 genocide of the Êzîdî.

Avión, named after Mexican estridentista Kyn Taniya’s 1919 book by the same name, is a new project that seeks to promote the innovation and internationalism espoused by Mexico’s historical avant-gardes, creating a transportation, a flight if you will, in between landwatches mostly from other languages into Spanish but also across inter-pollination of different emancipatory imaginariums, furies, directions and tongues.

Bio

Zêdan Xelef is a student in the ASU Department of English's MFA in creative writing program.


Book cover titled "A Barcode Scanner" by Zêdan Xelef with abstract pink and gray background.
Date published
Publisher
Gato Negro Ediciones

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