Helen Vassallo. Towards a Feminist Translator Studies: Intersectional Activism in Translation and Publishing. New York and London, Routledge, 2023, 160 p.

In Towards a Feminist Translator Studies: Intersectional Activism in Translation and Publishing, Helen Vassallo outlines a feminist agent-based approach to translation studies, which shifts the focus of the analysis from the translated text to its translator and the other agents involved in the chain of publication. She builds on Andrew Chesterman’s (2009) identification of a new subdiscipline that he calls translator studies, and she focuses mainly on five publishers who act as advocates for the representation of cultures challenging the allegedly universal Eurocentric view of the world. The firms that are the object of the case studies are five small independent British publishing houses, whose publishers are trying to dismantle familiar narratives and consumer expectations in their own way. Their mission statements and comments about their activity are presented through the interviews Vassallo conducted with some of the publishers and translators involved. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate how every agent can and has to be held accountable in the promotion of intersectional social justice activism, while unveiling the biases underlying the chain of publication of translated literature. The author believes that lasting change can start anywhere; for example, it can be fostered by small publishing houses that set the example through their committed activism. Sociological feminism is strictly intertwined with a translation studies approach, as confirmed by the companions chosen for the analysis: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists (2014) and Sarah Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life (2017). Vassallo explains that the former stands for actively rethinking the inherent preconceptions that societies have of women’s roles in them, which here champions equality for women in translation. The most prevalent idea is that translated literature should give voice to what Ngozi Adichie (2014, p. 46) refers to as the “full humanity of women” (Vassallo, 2023, p. 10), thereby encouraging an international and intersectional feminism which is further developed by Sara Ahmed. “Challenging the universal” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 29) becomes the main rallying cry of Towards a Feminist Translator Studies, with recourse to action, representation, responsibility, risk, and hospitality. The book is divided into five chapters, each convincingly linking one of these concepts to one of the five publishing houses investigated, although they are also often interconnected. The first chapter is centred on action. And Other Stories is a publishing house founded by Stefan Tobler in 2010 with the aim of promoting works that might otherwise not be published in English as not conventionally appealing to the general public. It was the only UK-based publishing house that accepted Kamila Shamsie’s 2015 call for action to make 2018 the “Year of Publishing Women,” thereby disclosing the substantial gender gap in publishing and giving women writers more visibility. Moreover, as And Other Stories encourages especially translated literature, adherence to this initiative acted on the double marginality of women both in writing and in translation. Vassallo hypothesizes that the provocation regarding 2018 was mostly discarded for three possible reasons: the risk-averse nature of publishing, complacency, and expectation bias (adding “identification” in the fifth chapter). Risk becomes particularly relevant in a post-pandemic world, she explains, since humans tend to avoid it even more now, looking for reassurance in the familiar and in the “normal.” However, translated literature questions and subverts these notions, as the case studies demonstrate. And Other Stories offers an alternative narrative to a male-dominated industry, taking a public stance as a feminist publisher. Even though the long-term effects of this decision cannot yet be assessed, the positive response to the “Year of Publishing Women” has already resulted in more books written by women being proposed …