On the mother and censorship – Sulaiman Addonia in NYT (in 2023):

‘My mother, who can’t read and write, is one of my literary influences. I was 3 or 4 when she left our Sudanese refugee campfor Saudi Arabia, leaving me in the care of my maternal grandmother. The void she left became a space for my creativity, where I imagined a different world with her and my whole family together.
She stimulated my imagination further when she sent tape recordings instead of asking for one of the male transcriptionists who wrote letters for analphabetic people.’

(…)

‘The pattern is familiar. I publish something, share it on social media and then they call and translate it for her. The intention of these relatives is clear: to use my mother as a censoring voice, to rein me in.’

(…)

‘These works were the axes I used to break my mind free. I wrote “Silence Is My Mother Tongue,” but it also rewrote me.
On the phone, after some hesitation, my mother mentions naked people in my books. I sweat. After years of separation, even a mundane conversation is laced with difficulties, let alone a discussion of the sex scenes in my books. Under the din of fellow Africans bellowing from the surrounding booths, I concoct a lie: “I can’t hear you,” I say. Shortly after, I hang up and go for a walk.’

(…)

‘There was a time when I sought to block family members on social media. But I never actually did. No matter how much I resent them for trying to provoke my mother, to enrage her so that she’ll restrain me, part of me finds them essential. Without their translating and sharing my work with my mother, something I never did myself, she would have remained oblivious to it. I’m caught between the fear that my “scandalous” words will eventually lead her to stop talking to me and the joy I feel when she asks me about my writing. As uncomfortable or tenuous these exchanges may be, they make me feel seen and acknowledged by her.’

(…)

‘Writing in English, a language inaccessible to my family in Eritrea, has enabled me to tackle sensitive themes and write freely. But by using the language of my adopted country, instead of the languages of home, I am now at the mercy of Western readers. I feel my imagination shackled to the desires of these readers — and to the gross simplifications of their literary tastes by Anglophone publishers.’

(…)

‘My European relatives are not there to translate whenever our words fall short. It is just her and me, the son she sent to the West as a teenager to be safe and to study science, but who has returned as a writer.’

(…)

‘“Ket’sebeg,” my mother says in Tigrinya, referring to the beauty of the cover. Her voice, which hasn’t changed since my childhood, reminds me of the tapes. An idea comes to me: I could pay for my novel to be translated into Tigrinya and then record an audiobook solely for my mother.’ (…)

‘It’s this possibility that makes me ask myself, before I embark on the audiobook project: What matters more to me, my mother’s presence in my life or my unfiltered stories in hers?’

Read the essay here.

The mother as absence and censor at the same time. The mother, the not present censor.
And the ultimate measure.

An audiobook, just for the mother. The most intimate audiobook ever made.