Uncomfortable Truths

**Lillian M Banks, Chicago, IL, Enrolled member of the Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians**

A friend once said I have the social skills of a dead ant. White buffalo in a Swarovski shop is more like it.

In these parts, and in these times, you must be careful what you look like.

Since 2017, the material reality of an expiration date has hung over my head: six months to a year they said, and assigned me to a palliative oncologist.

December 2017. Stage IV lung cancer, metastasized to my brain.

Dec 6, 2017: Results of a cranial MRI read: “These findings are compatible with metastatic disease … .” All our phones began ringing off the hook. As instructed, we raced to the ER where we were greeted by a team of oncologists.

On Dec 8, a neurosurgeon removed a 2 cm metastatic lesion. At the first post-op visit, I quipped: “I suppose you’re here to talk to me about the approximate size of my favorite tumor?” That’s the title of short story by Sherman Alexie. The refrain became a long-standing joke between me and hospital staff during my week-long stay. After my discharge, I returned to deliver a bag of treats that included a copy of Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven for the break room.

Indian humor. It’s not for everyone. But the work of Sterlin Harjo and others has given us permission to laugh again.

In January 2018, they screwed a steel frame onto my head and stuck me in a gammaknife radiation chamber for a couple hours to knock out the remaining lesions After that, chemo, radiation, more chemo, more radiation. Finally, immunotherapy. The treatment was “experimental” at the time. Now it’s first-line standard of care for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer.

Truth be told: cancer has been kind. Statistically, I’m not supposed to be here. Others have fared much worse with this disease, most of them are dead.

Even before the cancer journey, my life was anything but straight-line stuff. I’ve learned the hard way that telling the whole truth about a life like mine is risky business. Because you don’t get “extra credit” for having pulled yourself up by non-existent bootstraps, or for overcoming obstacles few others in your income/education bracket have known.

Imposter syndrome is real, the playgrounds where you never fit in are never far away and the biggest bully you’ll ever stare down is yourself. A shrink once looked at my CV and asked: “You don’t believe any of this is real, do you?”

People with my background aren’t supposed to live the life I’ve led. When we do, we’re expected to pretend we didn’t. Sometimes we get caught “oversharing”– pinching ourselves in public, trying to make it real–and things can get hairy.

Most recently, I’ve been collaborating with Aaron M. Sayne, a translator I first met in the early 2000s, when we struck up conversation based on shared interest in Elfriede Jelinek. For years, we’d been reading and providing mutual feedback on each other’s work. In 2024, we formalized our collaboration as a translator team with the publication of a short story by Helga Schubert (Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, 2020). Schubert’s “On Getting Up” appeared in the British literary journal, Fictionable in Winter, 2024.

Our collaboration has continued since then, with one highlight being Johanna Sebauer’s delightful story “Pickeled” published in Asymptote in January 2025. We’ve got a few irons in the fire, and hope to report on more good news soon.

RESUMÉ

ABOUT

Lillian M. Banks *

On Indian Land

This Piece of Land

RESUME

Degrees:

2000: MA in the Humanities, University of Chicago, June 2000

Thesis: “Mule Minus Forty Million Acres: Topographies of Geographic Disorientation and Redface Minstrelsy in George Tabori’s Weisman und Rotgesicht.”

2004: PhD in Germanic Studies, University of Illinois Chicago, July 2004

Thesis: “‘Had We but the Word…’: A Critical Commentary on Thickly Descriptive Translations of Ingeborg Bachmann“

Published Translations:

Ingeborg Bachmann, “Night Flight” and “In Twilight.” Two poems, trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: Denver Quarterly 32 (1997): 7-9.
Ingeborg Bachmann, Three Radio Plays. Trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. 223 pages. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1999.
Ingeborg Bachmann, “The Ferry” and “In Heaven and on Earth.” Short stories, trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: Chicago Review 46.1 (2000): 116-24.
Ingeborg Bachmann, “To Die for Berlin,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: “If We had the Word.” Ingeborg Bachmann. Views and Reviews. Ed. by Gisela Brinker-Gabler and Markus Zisselberger. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 2004, 7–16.
Ingeborg Bachmann, Last Living Words: The Ingeborg Bachmann Reader. Trans. and ed. by Lilian M. Friedberg, with an introduction by Dagmar C.G. Lorenz. 363 pages. Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2005.
“Verily” and “Salt and Bread”, two poems by Ingeborg Bachmann, in: Denver Quarterly 57.4 (2023): 27-28.
Elfriede Jelinek, “Rosamunde,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg, for: The Power of Language. Museum Exhibition. New York: Austrian Cultural Forum, 2005. Excerpt publ. on Elfriede Jelinek website.
Elfriede Jelinek, “Music and Fear: Some Thoughts on Olga Neuwirth’s ‘Islands’,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg, for: The Power of Language. Museum Exhibition. New York: Austrian Cultural Forum, 2005.
Elfriede Jelinek, “Slicing Her Own Slit in Space: On Valie Export’s Video Installations,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg, for: The Power of Language. Museum Exhibition. New York: Austrian Cultural Forum, 2005.
Elfriede Jelinek, The Wall. Excerpt trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg, commissioned by Rowohlt Theater Verlag and Elfriede Jelinek. 2005. Published on Elfriede Jelinek website,
Elfriede Jelinek, Bambiland, trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: Theater 39.3 (2009): 111-43. Also published on Elfriede Jelinek website.
Elfriede Jelinek, Sport Chorus. Trans. by Lilian M. Banks, commissioned by Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (MOCAK). Kraków, 2012.
Bambiland by Elfriede Jelinek, trans. Lillian M. Banks, performed at The Glad Café, directed by Peter Lorenz. June 11, 2017, Glasgow, Scotland.
Bambiland, by Elfriede Jelinek, trans. Lillian M. Banks, performed at the Fringe Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland, directed by Peter Lorenz, featuring Jelena Bašic, August 2024.
Heide Goettner-Abendroth, The Goddess and her Heros. Transl. by Lilian M. Friedberg. Stow, MA: Anthony Publishing, 1995.
The Third Reich Sourcebook. Transl. by Lilian M. Friedberg. Introd., annot. and ed. by Sander L. Gilman and Anson Rabinbach. 991 pages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.

Stefanie von Schnurbein, “The Function of Loki in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: History of Religions Journal: An International Journal for Comparative Historical Studies 40.2 (2000): 109–24.
Henryk Broder, “We Invented the Holocaust!” Trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: Transition: An International Review 89.11.1 (2001): 74–87.
Emine Sevgi Özdamar, “My Berlin,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: Chicago Review 48.2/3 (2002): 226–30.
Henryk Broder, “The Germanization of the Holocaust,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: A Jew in the New Germany—Selected Writings by Henryk Broder. Ed. by Sander L. Gilman and Lilian M. Friedberg. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003, 102–112.
Henryk Broder, “Tagar and the Teepee Family,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: A Jew in the New Germany—Selected Writings by Henryk Broder. Ed. by Sander L. Gilman and Lilian M. Friedberg. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003, 122–129.
Henryk Broder, “Just in Time: A Catholic Casuist on the Front in the War on Terror,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: A Jew in the New Germany—Selected Writings by Henryk Broder. Ed. by Sander L. Gilman and Lilian M. Friedberg. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003, 139–145.
Timetables of History. 4^th edition. 2000—2004 period trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg et al. literEd. byBernard Grun. 848 pages. New York: Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 2005.
Najem Wali, “The Iraqi Literary Scene before and after April 9, 2003,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: Literature from the Axis of Evil: Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Other Enemy Nations. Words Without Borders, ed. New York: The New Press, 2006, 51–54.
Dietmut Niedecken, “Work which is not to be seen. The institutional countertransference in dreams,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: The countertransferential dream in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Ed. by Helmwardt Hierdeis, Göttingen, 2010.
Uta Karacaoğlan, “Tattoo and Taboo: On the Meaning of Tattoos in the Analytic Process,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 93.1 (2012): 5–28.
Edelbert Köb, “The Artist Who Swallowed the World When It Was Still a Disc: Reflections on the Work of Erwin Wurm in the Austrian and International Context,” trans. by Lillian Banks. In: Erwin Wurm: Good Boy, Exhibition Catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (MOCAK). Kraków, 2013, 20–40.
Claudia Slanar, “Compelling Logic: On Josef Dabernig’s Films,” trans. by Lillian Banks. In: Josef Dabernig: 14 Films, Exhibition Catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (MOCAK). Kraków, 2013, 161–64.
Angela Mauss-Hanke, “‘To hear significance is to translate’ (George Steiner) – psychoanalytic considerations about capabilities and limitations of translation processes in literal and clinical work,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. Presentation at the International Psychoanalytic Association in Prague, 2013.
Angela Mauss-Hanke, “Psychoanalytic Considerations about the Anti-Oedipal Condition in Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea and in the Analysis of Miss M.,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 94 (2013): 477–499.
Angelika Nollert, “Jirí Kolár and Nuremberg,” trans. by Lillian Banks. In: Jirí Kolár: Collage with an Ermine, Exhibition Catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (MOCAK). Kraków, 2013, 8–12.
Jürgen Kaumkötter, “Their Livers Pecked to Pieces,” trans. by Lillian Banks. In: Medicine in Art, Exhibition Catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (MOCAK). Kraków, 2016, 39–63.
Axel Hinrich Murken, “Medicine and the Healing Arts in the Work of Joseph Beuys,” trans. by Lillian Banks. In: Medicine in Art, Exhibition Catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (MOCAK). Kraków, 2016, 87–103.
Tex Rubinowitz, “Melancholy of the Moment,” trans. by Lillian Banks. In: Daniel Spoerri: Art Taken Out of the Ordinary, Exhibition Catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (MOCAK). Kraków, 2016.
Laura Viviana Strauss, “From pilot fish to analyst: Finding a path between autistic and symbiotic defences,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 97.6 (2016): 1521–1545.
Elisabeth Imhorst, “Experiences of and with homosexual applicants, candidates and colleagues in the Cologne-Düsseldorf Working Group of the DPV / IPA since 1995,” trans. by Lilian M. Banks. Lecture presented at the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF) Symposium “Homosexuality: the practice of psychoanalytical societies in Europe and the experience of psychoanalysts in their daily practice.” Brussels, March 3–5, 2017.
Monika Albrecht, “Colonization and Magical World View in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Fragment of a Novel Das Buch Franza,” trans. by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: Glossen, Heft 7 (2000).
Gewissensbits, Gesellschaft für Informatik, e.V., contributions by various authors, from 2012–2024, trans. Lillian M. Banks.

Original Work: Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals

Lilian M. Friedberg, “Dare to Compare: Americanizing the Holocaust.” In: American Indian Quarterly 24.3 (2000): 353–80. Excerpts reprinted in The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. Ed. by Neil Levi and Michael Rothberg. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2003, 468–74.
Lilian M. Friedberg, “Mule Minus Forty Million Acres: Topographies of Geographic Disorien tation and Redface Minstrelsy in George Tabori’s Weisman und Rotgesicht.” In: New German Critique 84 (2001): 55–86.
Lilian M. Friedberg, “‘Verbrechen, die ich meine…’: Manners of Death as Thickly Descriptive Translation of Ingeborg Bachmann’s Todesarten.” In: Monatshefte 94.2 (2002): 189–208.
Lilian M. Friedberg, “‘A time yet to come…’: Translation and Historical Representation in Ingeborg Bachmann’s ‘Nachtflug‘.” In: German Quarterly 74.2 (2001): 148–63.
Karen Achberger, “‘Bösartig liebevoll den Menschen zugetan’: Humor in Ingeborg Bachmanns Todesarten-Projekt,” trans. into German by Lilian M. Friedberg. In: “Über die Zeit schreiben.” Literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Essays zu Ingeborg Bachmann. Ed. by Monika Albrecht and Dirk Göttsche. Würzburg: Königshausen, 1998, 227–243.
Lilian M. Friedberg, “Übersetzungen von Elfr i ede Jelinek ins Amerikanische.” In: Elfriede Jelinek Forschungszentrum Newsletter. February 14, 2006.
Lilian M. Friedberg, “Translating the Untranslatable: Elfriede Jelinek in Translation.” Invited lecture, Emory University, November 9, 2006. (Companion piece: “The N-word Lover: A Domestic Terror Tale from the Before Times“)
Lilian M. Friedberg, “Why Don’t I See Red? Presenting the Absence of Native American Perspectives in the Discourse on Race and Philosophy.” In: American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Native Americans in Philosophy 2.2 (2003): 7-14.
Lilian M. Friedberg, Sara Hall, “Drums along the Amazon: The Rhythm of the Iron System in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo.” In: Between the Local and the Global: Revisiting the Sites of Postwar German Cinema. Ed. by Stephan K. Schindler and Lutz Koepnick. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007, 117–139.
Lilian M. Friedberg, “Understanding Ingeborg Bachmann: A Step in the Right Direction.” Review of Karen Achberger’s Understanding Ingeborg Bachmann. In: Women in German Newsletter (Fall 1998): 20–21.

Edited Volume:

Henryk Broder, A Jew in the New Germany—Selected Writings of Henryk Broder. Ed. by Sander L. Gilman and Lilian M. Friedberg. Champaign, IL: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2003.

Book:

Lillian M. Banks and Eva Noack, Eine Katastrophe hält was aus/A Walking Catastrophe Can Put Up with A Lot. Berlin, Distanz Verlag, 2020.

Curricular Material:

Lilian M. Friedberg, SparkNotes German Grammar Chart. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2000.

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