“Nihao” – poem in Alchemy translated by Julia Conner

Translator’s Note: “Nihao” comes from Paloma Chen’s first collection of poetry, Invocación a las mayorías silenciosas (Letraversal, 2022), a translation of which is yet unpublished in its entirety. Like the rest of the collection, “Nihao” is suffused with a cacophony of voices: daughter, mother, and those who assume they already know who she is based on her racialized body as a Chinese woman in Spain. As the speaker becomes aware of others’ judgment of her identity, she grows from confusion to resignation to a habit of awareness enabling her to regard herself from the outside. Moving between Spanish, Valencian, English, and Chinese, this poem is emblematic of the entire collection’s focus on language’s ability to make one alien to oneself. 

[Read the poem in Alchemy-A Journal of Translation]