Tuesday, November 30, 2021

12 Books in Translation From Central Africa - Book Riot - Translation

I started making these lists because it’s harder than it should be to track down books in translation. That became especially apparent as I tried to find books in translation from Central Africa. The region has a storied literary history, and I had a long, long list of novels to read. Except…I couldn’t find them. There were a host of books that have not yet been translated into English despite their importance to their country’s literary history, works by authors such as Pepetela and Inongo-vi-Makome that I wanted to include but couldn’t.

I am using the definition of Central Africa that consists of Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and São Tomé and Principe. I will be listing the language that each book was translated from; the colonial and imperialist histories of these countries has influenced the main languages that authors are writing in and using.

Particularly, there is a dearth of books by Central African women that have been translated into English. This is always especially painful because I can see that the books exist, I can read about books I would love to read myself, but I can’t access them, and so can’t include them. Just as examples, I was frustrated by the inability to read works by Olinda Beja, Nadia Origo, Calixthe Beyala, Marie Claire Matip, and María Nsué Angüe. Many of the introductions and forwards to the books I was able to access referred to this issue as the “empty canon”: while there is an established canon of works by African women authors, they tend to be unreferenced, ignored, and untranslated, creating the illusion of a lack of texts.

But despite all the frustrating online searching, library hold attempts, and bookshelf wanderings, I did in fact manage to put a fantastic list of book recommendations together. Here, I have given you 12 books in translation that hail from Central Africa.

Please note that while I took great care to list content warnings where I could, sometimes things fall through the cracks. Please do additional research on the recommended titles if needed.

Awu's Story by Justine Mintsa

Awu’s Story by Justine Mintsa, Translated from French by Cheryl Toman

In a small village of Gabon, the driven, loving Awu marries Obame Afane, the local schoolteacher, after his first wife is unable to grant him any children. In this short but epic novel, Mintsa digs into the toxic, hypocritical sexism that permeates Awu’s world, populating a complex and fascinating cast of female characters, mothers, and friendships. She refuses the binary of pitting tradition and progress against one another, showing how both, on their own, can bring heartbreak. It is a beautifully written book that feels much longer (in a good way!) than its 111 pages, and the introduction by the translator and forward by Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury allow readers to dig deep into the fabric of the text.

Content warnings for infertility, sex shaming, torture, sexual assault and coercion, and colorism.

Black Moses by Alan Mabanckou, Translated from French by Helen Stevenson

Mabanckou is one of the most prolific contemporary writers of Francophone African literature. In his novel, young Moses grows up at an orphanage on the edge of Pointe-Noire, as a revolution changes the world outside. In a thread of absurd authoritarian figures and the long life stories that people find themselves sharing with young Moses, he learns of the injustice and sadness packed behind the People’s Republic of Congo’s stories. And he begins to wonder if there’s justice to be found. This tragicomic is compelling and strange, a boy growing up in the 1970s who is trying to find out if he can serve some sort of justice after all.

Content warnings for ethnicity-based prejudice, infanticide, colorism, grooming, rape, necrophilia, animal cruelty, deportation, and use of the R-slur.

La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono

La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono, Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel

La Bastarda features Okomo, a teen girl struggling under the weight of Fang cultural norms. When drawn into a gang of “indecent” girls, she stumbles on to a world of queerness, nonconformity, and acceptance — a world that includes her “man-woman” uncle Marcelo. This short read is the first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into English — but because this fantastic novel is queer, it is actually banned in Equatorial Guinea. Obono, a bisexual journalist, academic, political scientist, and queer activist, has written another book that I wish I could include here but that is not available in translation: Yo No Quería Ser Madre: Vidas Forzadas de Mujeres Fuera de la Norma, in which she interviews 30 women from her country, the majority of whom are gay or gender-nonconforming, about their experiences.

Content warnings for sexual assault, homophobia, and corrective rape.

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Translated from French by Roland Glasser

A writer named Lucien, fleeing violent censorship, arrives in this African city in secession from its country, ready to find refuge. But the place is not what he expected, and he finds that his childhood friend and new roommate, Requiem, isn’t what he expected either — he’s become a respected gangster in the city, swindling others to survive. Tram 83 is a club that is a cacophony of noise, the center of this city, a lawless place where children are exploited for prostitution, music plays, and fights break out, where the miners come to forget their troubles after long days of trying to find big payloads.

Content warnings for rape, sexual assault of minors, blackmail, false accusations, suicide mentions, violence.

Essential Encounters by Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury, Translated from French by Cheryl Toman

This 1969 novel is considered a crucial text in the “empty canon,” but the book by Francophone author Kouh-Moukoury of Cameroon was not translated into English until 2002. It features a woman struggling with infertility, and how it tears her marriage apart — their struggles expose all kinds of problems in the changing landscape of Cameroon, from the way women are shamed for being unable to produce children, to issues of polygamy, interracial relationships and ethnic groups, sexism, and other social issues, all through the lens of this one couple.

Content warnings for infertility and prejudice against infertile women.

Transparent City by Ondjaki

Transparent City by Ondjaki, Translated from Portuguese by Stephen Henighan

An epic cast of characters populates the Luanda apartment block at the center of this novel — from Odonato, who appears to be turning transparent, to the Mailman, always sending letters to government officials to try and get a motorized vehicle, to the Seashell Seller, all living in their world of corruption and money changing hands. It’s a poetic, chaotic web of a book, hilarious and touching, written in a compelling run-on narrative, flowing and sensory. It has a wide scope and won’t be for the faint of heart, but those willing to take the leap will happily swim through the rushing current of this strange, dark comedy, with its tender characters and bizarre tales.

Content warnings for drug addiction, anti-Asian sentiment, animal cruelty, homophobic language, shooting, violence.

Dark Heart of the Night by Léonora Miano, Translated from French by Tamsin Black

Ayané returns to her town after years of studying abroad, in order to visit her dying mother. When a militia forces villagers into a horrific ceremony, she becomes a witness. It is a compelling, dark novel about fear, complicity, and how larger structures normalize violence — about trauma, silence, and what people will do in order to survive. The scars of imperialism pit villagers against one another, and force Ayané into a toxic internalized racism, judging the silence of the villagers through her own privileged lens of having been away and apart from their way of life.

*Readers should skip the introduction by Terese Svoboda if their edition includes it, as the author is firmly opposed to its conclusions and does not consider it at all representative of her text.

Content warnings for stillbirth, racism, imperialism, rape, body horror, suicide, violence, cannibalism.

Johnny Mad Dog by Emmanuel Dongala

Johnny Mad Dog by Emmanuel Dongala, Translated from French by Maria Louise Ascher

Lao is a young woman who wants to become an engineer, but today she is preoccupied with survival: pushing her mother in a wheelbarrow, carrying their valuables in her pagne, and keeping an eye on her little brother as they flee from an incoming clash of military forces. Meanwhile, Matiti Mabé is a fighter working to help his side win. The book is a dark and painful satire of war, of its absurdity, of the thoughtlessness and blindness of violence and the posturing of power, of the so-often performative actions of journalists, foreign nationals, and organizations like the Red Cross.

Content warnings for torture, shooting, violence, graphically depicted rape, use of the R-slur.

Co-Wives, Co-Widows by Adrienne Yabouza, Translated from French by Rachael McGill

This witty novella is about two widows, Ndongo Passy and Grekpoubou, who find themselves fighting over what’s important to them after their husband dies unexpectedly — even though their dilemma is serious, Yabouza’s dry humor makes the book an entertaining book that U.S. readers will be thrilled to find finally available in English. McGill’s translation won an English PEN translation award in 2019, although the book can still be hard to track down. Yabouza herself is self-taught — she was born in Central African Republic, found asylum in France with her five children during the civil war, and later returned to the country of her birth. She writes fiction in Sango, Yakoma, Lingala, and French.

A General Theory of Oblivion by Agualusa

A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa, Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn

An agoraphobic woman named Ludo moves to the city of Luanda with her sister and brother-in-law. When they disappear in the midst of fighting, she walls herself into her apartment, forging a careful existence for herself and her dog Phantom. It’s a poetic, compelling novel that dips into a variety of stories to combine for a series of coincidences, a vaguely surreal tale that tells a small history of the city. It’s a beautiful collage, Ludo piecing together stories from her terrace, the reader and narration filling in the rest, all of it eventually coming together. Agualusa also has The Book of Chameleons available in translation.

Content warnings for agoraphobia, trauma and PTSD, rape and shame, violence, death, animal death.

Mr. Fix It by Richard Ali A Mutu, Translated from Lingala by Bienvenu Sene Mongaba

Ebamba (whose name means “mender,” hence the title) is a hell of a frustrating protagonist. The nearly 40-year-old man living in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is trying to scrounge up the money to fulfill the ambitious dowry demanded by his fiancé’s family. But it’s awfully hard to do so when he keeps being manipulated into tough situations, and can’t seem to get a job. The star of the show — other than your embarrassed sympathy for Ebamba as he stumbles from mishap to mishap — is the city of Kinshasa and its music. It is the first novel to be translated into English from Lingala, a Bantu language used by more than 8 million people.

Content warnings for homophobia, suicide, and sexual harassment, coercion, and assault.

The Fury and Cries of Women by Angele Rawiri

The Fury and Cries of Women by Angèle Rawiri, Translated from French by Sara Hanaburgh

Emilienne’s marriage is falling apart. She’s a career-oriented woman who makes more than her husband; they married despite parental opposition. Now, she’s dealing with multiple miscarriages, a hateful mother-in-law, and an adulterous husband; then her only daughter, Rékia, is unexpectedly murdered. Emilienne is a disobedient woman, and she at once tries to refuse the sexist pressures imposed on her, and desperately wants motherhood and to keep her marriage together at all costs. This book explores queerness, internalized sexism, and the struggle to have children. Rawiri is considered the first novelist of any gender from the country of Gabon, and this is the only one of her novels I could track down in English translation.

Content warnings for fatphobia, infertility and prejudice against infertile women, tribalism, miscarriage depiction, child’s death, AIDS fear, disordered eating, alcoholism, homophobia.


Want more books in translation content? I have lists for you of books in translation from Catalonia, Argentina, France, and Mexico. If you have recommendations or requests for future lists of books in translation, or if you want me to know about a book I might have missed, let me know on Twitter.

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Translation Is Hard Work. Lydia Davis Makes It Thrilling. - The New York Times - Translation

Lydia Davis learned German after being plopped into a classroom in Graz, Austria, at the age of 7. Her immersion began at home with breakfast: If she woke early, she received Schokolade mit Schlag (hot chocolate with whipped cream), and if she slept late she got Schokolade ohne Schlag (no whipped cream). After moving back to the United States not long after, she studied French, Latin and Italian. A lifetime of work as a translator (and novelist and short story writer and essayist) has followed.

Her new book, “Essays Two,” is organized around translation. As Davis points out in a preface, the book is more focused in its material than was her previous collection, “Essays One.” With “Two,” it helps to have a pre-existing interest in translation, or at least a general curiosity about language, whereas to enjoy the earlier collection you needed only a pre-existing interest in “stuff.” But whatever the topic, Davis is always superb company: erudite, adventurous, surprising.

In addition to translating Proust and Flaubert, she has tackled “books of all degrees of excellence and nonexcellence, of interest and no interest” — among them a sentimental biography of Marie Curie, art catalogs, travel essays and histories of China. Whatever the source, Davis finds innumerable joys in its conversion. The first essay here enumerates 21 of these pleasures. Translation, she notes, puts a person in intimate communion with an author, removes the anxiety of invention that attends most writing work and presents eternal (but often solvable) riddles. It also offers a form of hard-core armchair travel: To puzzle through “Madame Bovary” is to shoot through a wormhole from America of the 21st century into France of the 19th.

In an essay about translating Proust’s letters, Davis voyages to the apartment where he wrote much of “In Search of Lost Time.” The apartment has not been maintained as Proust left it, with his furniture and artifacts intact, but has instead become the location of a bank. Davis receives a tour of the writer’s former apartment from an employee who occasionally has to run off and deal with banking questions. Client meetings are held in Proust’s bedroom, and the bank’s waiting room is where the writer once warehoused an unruly pile of inherited possessions. “An imaginative financier with a little information might be haunted, sitting next to the lone potted plant, by the lingering ghostly presence of a crowded accumulation of heavy fin de siècle furniture and bric-a-brac, imbued with Proust’s personal associations,” Davis writes.

Although she learned German by immersion, Davis’s preferred method of language acquisition is quite different, and, to an outside observer, demonically challenging: She finds a book published in a language that she does not fully or even partially understand and then tries to figure out what it means.

Theo Cote

To improve her Spanish, she digs into a copy of “Las Aventuras de Tom Sawyer.” In some cases the decryption proves easy. Words like “plan” are the same in English and Spanish. In other cases she inductively reasons the meaning of a word after noticing it in different contexts. Hoja initially stumps her when it pops up in the phrase hoja de papel — “hoja of paper.” Later in the book, it occurs in the context of a tree. Finally, Huck wraps a dry hoja around something to make a cigarette, and Davis realizes that only one meaning would work as well with paper as with a tree or a cigarette: “leaf.” Of course, it would be possible to solve the hoja enigma in two seconds by plugging the word into Google, but that would destroy the fun.

Norwegian is a tougher case. For this, Davis selects a perversely difficult family saga by the writer Dag Solstad. At 426 pages, the novel consists of “almost unbroken blocks, with no chapters and few paragraph breaks.” Davis reads at a snail’s speed with a sharp pencil in hand, scribbling lists of vocabulary. The word sarkastisk (sarcastic) provides her with a trick for unlocking others: If she mentally replaces the k’s with c’s, Davis finds, certain foreign words become more easily deciphered: kusine is now legible as “cousin,” and kom as “come.”

Trying to learn a language from scratch by reading a book is like trying to write a complicated cake recipe by sitting and staring at the finished cake for several hundred hours. Is it the most efficient form of pedagogy? No, but Davis extracts endless thrills from the painstaking process. Her essays do a beautiful job of transmitting that satisfaction to the reader, although I was occasionally tempted to exercise my skimming muscles in places where she dove deep into the weeds. Skimming, however, would be the wrong move in a book that contains an incredible amount of life-enhancing morsels, such as the fact that the sound of a sneeze in Norwegian is spelled atsjoo.

In a piece about the French city of Arles, we learn that Arles not only receives the icy northwesterly mistral wind that is rumored to drive people insane, but that there are old diagrams called “wind roses” that include up to 32 named winds, each blowing from a specific direction. Unless you are a person whose activities heavily involve wind — mariner, surfer, kite enthusiast — it is unlikely that you will have considered such nuances of air movement in your daily life. “Never too soon to start!” you might think, considering whether you might be able to chart a wind rose tailored to your own neighborhood.

Davis’s essays are packed with these windows of opportunity to think more deeply — or at all — about many subjects. Others include paving stones, Gascon folk tales, parataxis, punctuation, cognates, medieval architecture and sheepdogs.

I enjoyed the book’s plenitude so much that I wasn’t distracted by its squat physical shape, which is adorable to hold but designed in such a way that the book tries to flip itself shut as you read. No amount of violent spine-cracking would break the object’s resistance, and around Page 300 I turned a corner and became charmed by its antagonistic construction. I will read you and you will like it, I warned my copy of “Essays Two.” And lo, I liked it, too.

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Monday, November 29, 2021

Dr. Allison on Reverse Translation in Cancer Research - OncLive - Translation

James P. Allison, PhD, discusses his research on reverse translation in cancer. 

James P. Allison, PhD, chair, Immunology, executive director, Immunotherapy Platform, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and a recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, discusses his research on reverse translation in cancer. 

Reverse translation, which is largely clinical trial–based, involves collecting specimens from patients on trials and observing the mechanisms for insight into new combination therapies, according to Allison. Previous research has demonstrated the components of a good signal, including T cells, myeloid cells, and fibroblasts, and this research aims to dissect that further, Allison adds. 

Once the critical observations have been made with the samples in the laboratory, mouse experiments are used to test hypotheses before the process is repeated with an iteration of change, Allison continues. Progress has been made with this method, particularly in genitourinary cancers, Allison says. This strategy is also being examined in pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma multiforme with the goal of making therapies work better, Allison concludes. 

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Strollout chosen as Macquarie dictionary’s 2021 word of the year - The Guardian - Dictionary

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Strollout chosen as Macquarie dictionary’s 2021 word of the year  The Guardian

'Vaccine' is word of the year for US dictionary Merriam-Webster - FRANCE 24 - Dictionary

Issued on: Modified:

Washington (AFP) – The American dictionary of reference Merriam-Webster on Monday revealed "vaccine" to be its word of the year for 2021, reflecting both the hopes and deep divisions sparked by vaccination as the world wrestled with year two of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"The word vaccine was about much more than medicine in 2021," the dictionary -- which based its decision on surging interest in the term's definition -- said in a post on its website.

"For many, the word symbolized a possible return to the lives we led before the pandemic. But it was also at the center of debates about personal choice, political affiliation, professional regulations, school safety, healthcare inequality, and so much more."

Merriam-Webster said the development of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines required it to expand its definition of the word "vaccine," because the technology triggers an immune response by telling human cells to create antigens, versus classic vaccines, which inject a neutralized form of a virus or antigens.

The word "vaccine" saw a 601 percent increase in definition lookups over the year, compared to 2020.

But "the prominence of the word vaccine in our lives... becomes even more starkly clear when we compare 2021 to 2019, a period in which lookups for the word increased 1048%," Merriam-Webster said.

Vaccines are back in the spotlight once again after the discovery of a new Covid-19 variant, prompting renewed appeals for people in the developed world to get vaccinated or boosted against the virus -- and for vaccines to be made more widely available across the developing world.

The World Health Organization has listed the Omicron strain as a "variant of concern," and countries around the world are now restricting travel from southern Africa, where the new strain was first detected, and taking other new precautions.

In the United States, top government scientist Anthony Fauci on Monday urged everyone eligible to get a Covid-19 vaccine to help protect against severe disease.

"A variant like this, although there's a lot we don't know about it, one thing we do know is that vaccinated people do much, much better than unvaccinated people," he said. "I would strongly suggest you get boosted now."

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Words and Power: How Dictionaries Define Us - Bowdoin News - Dictionary

“In the prologue of the [first Spanish] dictionary, there's this extended metaphor about when you open the dictionary, it's like you're entering this cave,” Boyle said. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about the project of making that dictionary, and also all of the kinds of definitions that it contains, which are just fabulously poetic and kind of surprising and counter a lot of our modern ideas about what it means to create these collections.” 

Both professors shared their curiosity about the future of the dictionary, as well as the evolution of national culture through vocabulary. 

“You have Urban Dictionary and all this other pseudo-dictionaries that are actually as used as many of the real dictionaries are—a lot of people go to Urban Dictionary all the time,” said Stavans. “Urban Dictionary is a democratic dictionary: for the people, by the people. There will come a time when no one will have objects, because the dictionary is a web page.”

“[With an online dictionary,] you don't have to page through the actual volume; you don't need to worry about alphabetical order—and there's a kind of efficiency to that, and we can all appreciate it,” Boyle added. “But, then, we may be nostalgic for the object of the dictionary and what it means to hold it.”

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‘Vaccine’ tops dictionary searches as Merriam-Webster chooses 2021 word of the year - PBS NewsHour - Dictionary

NEW YORK (AP) — With an expanded definition to reflect the times, Merriam-Webster has declared an omnipresent truth as its 2021 word of the year: vaccine.

“This was a word that was extremely high in our data every single day in 2021,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, told The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement.

“It really represents two different stories. One is the science story, which is this remarkable speed with which the vaccines were developed. But there’s also the debates regarding policy, politics and political affiliation. It’s one word that carries these two huge stories,” he said.

WATCH: How the COVAX vaccine program is faring, and what challenges developing nations still face

The selection follows “vax” as word of the year from the folks who publish the Oxford English Dictionary. And it comes after Merriam-Webster chose “pandemic” as tops in lookups last year on its online site.
“The pandemic was the gun going off and now we have the aftereffects,” Sokolowski said.

At Merriam-Webster, lookups for “vaccine” increased 601% over 2020, when the first U.S. shot was administered in New York in December after quick development, and months of speculation and discussion over efficacy. The world’s first jab occurred earlier that month in the UK.

Compared to 2019, when there was little urgency or chatter about vaccines, Merriam-Webster logged an increase of 1,048% in lookups this year. Debates over inequitable distribution, vaccine mandates and boosters kept interest high, Sokolowski said. So did vaccine hesitancy and friction over vaccine passports.

The word “vaccine” wasn’t birthed in a day, or due to a single pandemic. The first known use stretches back to 1882 but references pop up earlier related to fluid from cowpox pustules used in inoculations, Sokolowski said.

It was borrowed from the New Latin “vaccina,” which goes back to Latin’s feminine “vaccinus,” meaning “of or from a cow.” The Latin for cow is “vacca,” a word that might be akin to the Sanskrit “vasa,” according to Merriam-Webster.

Inoculation, on the other hand, dates to 1714, in one sense referring to the act of injecting an “inoculum.”

Earlier this year, Merriam-Webster added to its online entry for “vaccine” to cover all the talk of mRNA vaccines, or messenger vaccines such as those for COVID-19 developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

While other dictionary companies choose words of the year by committee, Merriam-Webster bases its selection on lookup data, paying close attention to spikes and, more recently, year-over-year increases in searches after weeding out evergreens. The company has been declaring a word of the year since 2008. Among its runners-up in the word biography of 2021:

INSURRECTION: Interest was driven by the deadly Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol. Arrests continue, as do congressional hearings over the attack by supporters of President Donald Trump. Some of Trump’s allies have resisted subpoenas, including Steve Bannon.

Searches for the word increased by 61,000% over 2020, Sokolowksi said.

INFRASTRUCTURE: President Joe Biden was able to deliver what Trump often spoke of but never achieved: A bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law. When Biden proposed help with broadband access, eldercare and preschool, conversation changed from not only roads and bridges but “figurative infrastructure,” Sokolowski said.

“Many people asked, what is infrastructure if it’s not made out of steel or concrete? Infrastructure, in Latin, means underneath the structure,” he said.

PERSEVERANCE: It’s the name of NASA’s latest Mars rover. It landed Feb. 18, 2021. “Perseverance is the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to the Red Planet, with a name that embodies NASA’s passion, and our nation’s capability, to take on and overcome challenges,” the space agency said.

The name was thought up by Alexander Mather, a 14-year-old seventh-grader at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia. He participated in an essay contest organized by NASA. He was one of 28,000 K-12 students to submit entries.

NOMAD: The word had its moment with the 2020 release of the film “Nomadland.” It went on to win three Oscars in April 2021, including best picture, director (Chloé Zhao) and actress (Frances McDormand). Zhao became the first woman of color to win best director.

The AP’s film writer Jake Coyle called the indie success “a plain-spoken meditation on solitude, grief and grit. He wrote that it “struck a chord in a pandemic-ravaged year. It made for an unlikely Oscar champ: A film about people who gravitate to the margins took center stage.”

Other words in Merriam-Webster’s Top 10: Cicada (we had an invasion), guardian (the Cleveland Indians became the Cleveland Guardians), meta (the lofty new name of Facebook’s parent company), cisgender (a gender identity that corresponds to one’s sex assigned at birth), woke (charged with politics and political correctness) and murraya (a tropical tree and the word that won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee for 14-year-old Zaila Avant-garde).

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