Native Tongue [Hardcover]

Suzette Haden Elgin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2000 | Series: Native Tongue Trilogy

Called "fascinating" by the New York Times upon its first publication in 1984, Native Tongue won wide critical praise and cult status, and has often been compared to the futurist fiction of Margaret Atwood. Set in the twenty-second century, the novel tells of a world where women are once again property, denied civil rights and banned from public life. Earth's wealth depends on interplanetary commerce with alien races, and linguists --a small, clannish group of families --have become the ruling elite by controlling all interplanetary communication. Their women are used to breed perfect translators for all the galaxies' languages.

Nazareth Chornyak, the most talented linguist of the family, is exhausted by her constant work translating for trade organizations, supervising the children's language education, running the compound, and caring for the elderly men. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth comes to discover is that a slow revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them from men's control.

"Native Tongue brings to life not only the possibility of a women's language, but a rationale for one,"-Village Voice

"Elgin takes up more than linguistics, of course-everything from religion to sexthe story is absolutely compelling."-Women's Review of Books

Suzette Haden Elgin is author of twelve science fiction novels and is widely know for her best-selling series The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense and for The Grandmother Principles. She is director of the Ozark Center for Language Studies and is professor emerita of linguistics at San Diego State University.

Susan Squier is Julia Brill professor of English and Women's Studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

SUZETTE HADEN ELGIN is author of twelve science fiction novels and is widely known for her best-selling The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense and for The Grandmother Principles. SUSAN SQUIER is editor of Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century Visions of Reproductive Technology. JULIE VEDDER is professor of English at Pennsylvania State University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY; 1 edition (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558612556
• ISBN-13: 978-1558612556
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,525,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative but dated, better social commentary than sci-fi, September 27, 2003

By 

David "I read science fiction and fantasy, bu... (LAUREL, MD, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Native Tongue (Paperback)

I first read this book over 10 years ago. Even then I thought it was a little dated -- the author was clearly reacting against the Reagan era and extrapolating a hypothetical future where women have become chattel (albeit somewhat pampered chattel).

This is an "idea" book, and the ideas are fascinating. Laadan, the "women's tongue," (Elgin has actually created and published Laadan books), the power of communication, very alien aliens.. these are all interesting. If you are a linguist, a feminist, or someone who just likes far-out social speculation, this book will be interesting to you. It does have a certain hold on the imagination, such that I still remember it and think about it years later.

But as fiction, much less as science fiction, it leaves something to be desired. The entire premise, that the U.S. will become a sort of genteel Protestant patriarchal dictatorship, falls flat. (Some people may argue we are already heading in that direction, but I really can't see the repeal of the 19th Amendment and every man in the country becoming convinced that women have no more intellectual abilities than children.) Technology and space exploration is poorly explained, all the "sci-fi" bits are handwaved and thus there are some notable gaps in my suspension of disbelief. The aliens and the interstellar society exist as a backdrop for Elgin to explore her social views, which is fine if you are reading the book for social/feminist-linguistic theory, but will disappoint if you are reading the book for science fiction.

Most annoyingly, every single male character is one-dimensional. All the men are at best condescending egotists, at worst thugs. One is left with the impression that almost spontaneously, American society was taken over by a Protestant Taliban, and not one man ever questions the new social order. Aren't there ANY men who are not chauvinistic troglodytes, with egos so fragile that their world would fall apart if a woman ever demonstrated independence and competence in his presence? Not in this book, and not in many of Elgin's other books either.

I also agree with another reviewer; the first book in the Native Tongue trilogy is worth reading. The second book was mediocre and unfocused and didn't seem to come to any resolution. The third book, rather than picking up where the second book left off, did not tie up any of the loose ends from the first two books, and instead seems to be little more than a poorly edited collection of short stories that happen to be set in more or less the same universe.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Gentle Bite, August 15, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Native Tongue (Paperback)

This novel has the gentle bite of the author's personality and revealing insight of society.

It is a novel regarding a future society ruled by linguistics, Ms. Elgin's own area of expertise. In order to understand the alien species humanity encounters in space, linguistics holds the economic key to the universe. However, in the novel as perhaps it is in life, linguistics is ruled by men, and their wives and children are subject to their plans and demands. In the course of the novel, the linguists use genetics to breed for better linguists, but learn that their wives and children are not subjects of their control.

Ms. Elgin's able to make this seemingly far-fetched idea a very realistic one. She does this through the strength of her characters, and her understanding of human nature--a very well thought out novel!

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It inspired me to add Linguistics to my course of study!, February 24, 2001

By 

S Pearce (Adelaide, South Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Native Tongue (Paperback)

I loved this book ... it presented issues relating to prejudice from a national, class and gender perspective. Although it was written in almost a different era, it is still able to portray the enormous difficulties encountered when one is 'different'.

.. Jealousies rage where there is truly no justification. .. Individuals are sacrificed for the good of the group. .. Language both empowers and divides. .. The science fiction element is sufficient to enhance the scope of a book that potentially could have been bound by western culture.

I have never written to an author before, but I did this time ... and not only that, I have taken up Linguistics in addition to my Psychology studies at University.