No Budu Please by Wingston Gonzalez and translated by Urayoan Noel

This is poetry from Guatemala.

No Budu Please by Wingston Gonzalez translated by Urayoan Noel is published by Ugly Duckling Presse. This is a Book originally written in Spanish. This was published in 2018.0 and has the ISBN of 9.78194643319E12.

Wingston González’s No Budu Please, translated by Urayoán Noel, is a Guatemalan entry that should be read as language in motion, not language politely waiting to be understood. The title itself resists smooth English. It carries sound, code-switching, cultural friction, and a refusal to make the reader entirely comfortable. González’s work is often connected to Garifuna and Afro-Caribbean linguistic energies, and Noel’s translation likely intensifies that play rather than smoothing it away. Published by Ugly Duckling Presse, the book belongs on the shelf as a formally alive work of Black Central American poetry. It reminds us that translation can preserve difficulty as a form of respect.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.