Magyarazni

The word magyarazni (pronounced MUG-yar-az-knee) means to explain in Hungarian, but translates literally as make it Hungarian. This faux-Hungarian language primer, written in direct address, invites readers to experience what it’s like to be made Hungarian by growing up with a parent who immigrated to North America as a refugee. In forty-five folk-art visual poems each paired with a written poem, Hajnoczky reveals the beauty and tension of first-generation cultural identity.

‘Because translation between cultures is always fraught - and yet somehow translate we must - Magyarazni explores language and cultural identity in the permeable space fomenting between family and society, word and image initiating us into a new alphabet of lived meaning. In reading we wonder along with Magyarazni’s wandering you, we care and get entangled in the brambles of your cursive, we too are made Hungarian. ’
- Oana Avasilichioaei

‘Familiar but out of reach, Magyarazni reforms the language of home on the tip of your tongue, a language of knotted cursive and bubbled syntax; folksong and stovetop. Each letter blossoms as a hand-drawn flower and a sputtering drone of spits and pith. Magyarazni punctuates every I with a poppy seed, every C with the splinter ed foil of a solemn treat. Mournful and personal, Magyarazni calls out for the language of family.’
- Derek Beaulieu