Aug 28, 2026

Strangers

Rebecca Ruth Gould

Hosted by Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera

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Summary

In this episode, Rebecca Ruth Gould, Distinguished Professor, Comparative Poetics & Global Politics at SOAS University of London, and University of Puerto Rico professors Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Cora Monroe González, discuss writing, travel, bilingualism, translation, defamiliarization and the power of language as facets of Gould’s book Strangers: Stories (Serving House Books, 2025).

Nuevos Horizontes is the podcast of the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes at the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez.

In Stranger: Stories, Rebecca Ruth Gould uses ink and paper to describe the power of art, loss, love, distance, and words themselves.

Find Rebecca Ruth Gould on substack.

Quotes, books, places, and scholars mentioned in this conversation:

Alcatraz Restaurant in Mayagüez.

Gabriel García Márquez, Doce cuentos peregrinos.

Aurora Levins Morales, “Hija de las Américas.”

Heriberto Yépez, Transnational Battlefield.

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

Roberto Bolaño, Cuentos completos.

“Mi patria son mis hijos.” -Roberto Bolaño

"My home, or a way to create continuity between spaces." -Rebecca Ruth Gould

Writing as a defamiliarization process

"Writing as a way to see things differently." -Rebecca Ruth Gould

How languages influence experience

"I became a different person, being immersed in another language....It allowed me to develop different identities, different values, to question things I had taken for granted." -Rebecca Ruth Gould

"Reflections on Exile," Edward Said.

"[Edward Said] is a paradigm in the modern world." -Rebecca Ruth Gould

"Capturing certain cities in time, particularly Damascus...the places I describe are not there anymore." -Rebecca Ruth Gould

"The hierarchy in the word charity that isn't there in Persian and Arabic." -Rebecca Ruth Gould

Walter Benjamin

A translation mindset

Distance as a creative resource

Tony Hillerman