Factory of Tears

If you can point to the globe and find Belarus, more power to you. Poet Valzhyna Mort is a Belarusian cultural nationalist, well-regarded and -awarded in Europe. She now lives in the U.S. and this bilingual edition is her first tome published in this country. The New Yorker noted: “Mort…strives to be an envoy for her native country, writing with almost alarming vociferousness about the struggle to establish a clear identity for Belarus and its language.” From “Belarusian I”: