Praise for Native Tongue
“Extremely relevant.” —Bookforum
“A pioneering feminist experiment.” —Literary Hub
"A welcome reminder of the feminist legacies of science fiction. . . . Explores the power of speech, agency, and subversion in a work that is as gripping, troubling, and meaningful today as it has ever been." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“This carefully crafted, fascinating dystopia is a call to action even decades later, and highlights the importance of language and its uses in politics of power.” —Booklist (starred review)
“A necessary and exhilarating book.” —4Columns
“Published in 1984, Native Tongue got it right. In the power and precision of language, women can begin to change the world." —Maggie Shen King, author of An Excess Male
“This angry feminist text is also an exemplary experiment in speculative fiction, deftly and implacably pursuing both a scientific hypothesis and an ideological hypothesis through all their social, moral, and emotional implications.” —Ursula K. Le Guin
“Native Tongue brings to life not only the possibility of a women’s language, but also the rationale for one. . . . [It is] a language that can bring to life concepts men have never needed, have never dreamed of—and thus change the world. Elgin never makes the mistake of easy utopianism or over-optimism. Her women revel in patience.” —Village Voice Literary Supplement
"Less well known than the The Handmaid's Tale but just as apocalyptic in [its] vision . . . Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue . . . records female tribulation in a world where . . . women have no public rights at all. Elgin's heroines do, however, have one set of weapons—words of their own." —Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, New York Times Book Review
2019-04-28
A feminist classic revived.
This book was published in 1984, a year before The Handmaid's Tale. The two share several similarities. Both take place in a not-too-distant future in which governments use Christianity as the rationale for stripping women of basic rights. Human reproduction is regulated by men. And women work together both to make their own lives bearable within this system and to create a better world for their daughters. Elgin (Peacetalk 101, 2002, etc.), who died in 2015, was a linguist as well as a science-fiction author, and the conceit at the heart of her dystopian narrative is brilliant: When humans make contact with aliens, people who understand how languages work will become an invaluable resource for connecting with other sentient species. Linguists become a sort of aristocracy, both necessary for interstellar trade and reviled for their elitism. While it's true that the men of the linguist families enjoy some power and authority, the women of their houses are valued solely for their ability to work as translators and their capacity to produce children who will work as translators. Once they are infertile, they retire to the Barren House. The central household in this novel is the Chornyak family, and what the men don't know is that the women in their Barren House have been creating a secret language, a language that will allow women to communicate with each other, a language that will let them express experiences for which they have found no word in any language that they've learned. The worldbuilding here is intriguing. The concept of women freeing themselves from patriarchy by developing their own language is awesome. The execution, though….This is a novel about language, but the characters all sound the same—and there are so many characters that it's hard to keep them straight. Not only do they sound the same, they also sound quite distinctly like characters in vintage genre fiction. Who imagines a future that includes words like "honcho" and "damnfool" and "loobyloo," let alone swears such as "Sweet jesus christ on a donkey in the shade of a lilac tree"?
For women's studies majors and hardcore fans of old-school science fiction, and probably nobody else.
