Undelivered Lectures – serie

An energetic and irreverent essay on the forgotten art of the lecture, part of Transit’s new Undelivered Lectures series.

A sensitive, stunning debut on movement, migration, and loss, in the vein of Valeria Luiselli’s Sidewalks.

From a writer who has “invented a new form” (Annie Ernaux), an exploration of mortality, alienation, boredom, surveillance, and how we regard ourselves among the animals.Animal Stories begins with Kate Zambreno’s visit to the monkey house at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where one stark tree “seems to be the stage design for a simian production of Waiting for Godot.” But who are the players and who is the audience, and can they recognize each other?What follows is a series of reports from the deep strangeness of the zoo, a space that is “more often than not deeply sad, an odd choice for regular pilgrimages of fun.” Amid excursions with their young children, Zambreno turns to Garry Winogrand’s photographs and John Berger’s writings on animals, reshaping the spectator as the subject to decode our complex “zoo feelings”—what we project, and what we refuse to see. Then, in the “Kafka system” that dovetails with these zoo studies, Zambreno thinks through the notebooks and animal stories of a writer known for playing at the threshold between species, continuing their investigation into the false divide between human and animal.Drawing on forms including reports, essays, journals, and stories, Zambreno renders visible the enclosures we construct and the ones we occupy ourselves.

A deeply felt chronicle into the wilderness of the first forty days of new motherhood. In the final weeks of her pregnancy, Aysegul Savas becomes fascinated by the mythology around the first forty days after giving birth, and the invisible beings that are said to surround the mother. 'In Turkish, we speak of extracting the forty days, like a sort of exorcism. My grandmothers assure me that it will all get better after forty days are out.' A friend lends a book that suggests forty days of rest and fortifying broths and avoiding wind and cold. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, forty days are seen as a period of trial and transformation. They are often journeys into the wilderness and 'its vast and unruly territories.' When the baby arrives, Savas charts her own path into the wilderness of new motherhood - a space of contradiction, of chaos and care, mothering and being mothered. 'What is the trial of the postpartum crossing?' writes Savas. 'Where will mother and child emerge once they have left the wild?'