The word magyarázni (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 - Magyarázni 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 Magyarázni's wandering "you," we care and
get entangled in the "brambles of your cursive," we too are "made
Hungarian."'
'Familiar but out of reach, Magyarázni 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. Magyarázni punctuates
every I with a poppy seed, every C with the splintered foil of a solemn
treat. Mournful and personal, Magyarázni calls out for the language of
family.'
