Native Tongue | 
#TBRPile 📚 Nazareth, the most talented linguist of her family, is exhausted. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth does not yet know is that a clandestine revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them of men's domination...
#TBRPile Day 29 - I‘m a bit behind. It‘s been a hectic exhausting week at work but I‘m so happy to see all my students again! 📚 In a future where women are once again property and banned from public life, a small group of women wield power as linguists. Nazareth is a linguist longing for retirement but what she finds instead is a quiet revolution. Word by word, women are creating a language of their own...
Please please please I hope this series doesn't turn out to be TERFy.
Vacillating between next audiobook options. Kinda annoyed by the updated NATIVE TONGUE listing with VanderMeer listed first... 😶
pickIt‘s a damn shame this feminist science fiction cult classic trilogy is out of print today. Elgin was a linguist, & this novel explores a world where women‘s rights have been revoked, but the rise of a women‘s language may change everything. Also ALIENS! Native Tongue is not a subtle book but it is a fascinating one, narratively, historically (2nd Wave feminism, Moral Majority), & in how it interacts with linguistic theory. Can‘t wait for the 2nd!
pickCongratulations @StillLookingForCarmenSanDiego on the milestone!! 🎊🎈🍾🎉 And for paying it forward! #girlpowergiveaway
I first read Native Tongue in the mid-90s when I was a me@bet of the now defunct Feminist Science Fiction Fantasy and Utopian Book Club (an online phenomenon). Elgin was a linguist and a poet, so the style and pace of the book may not appeal to everyone, but it is a powerful book that predates The Handmaid‘s Tale.
so-soI found it less compelling and more didactic than Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. The 19th amendment is repealed and women are once again virtual chattel Humanity makes an effort to communicate with aliens. 13 houses breed a line of superior linguists, and in the guise of learning new and valuable alien languages women work to create a language of their own. The relationship between our language and our reality is a central focus of this narrative.
"Humoring the ladies" ?????Some of this is hitting too close to home. #feministcultclassics
A snapshot of what I'm currently reading, including picks for my #LitsyAtoZ and #ReadHarder2017 challenges. 👍 I picked up Native Tongue after reading that it's a read-a-like for The Handmaid's Tale, despite predating it by a year and sadly, still relevant. #allisnotlost
