Dreaming in Hindi (Hardcover)

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Product Description
Having miraculously survived a serious illness and now at an impasse in her career as a magazine editor, Rich spontaneously accepted a free-lance writing assignment to go to India, where she found herself thunderstruck by the place and the language. Before she knew it she was on her way to Udaipur, a city in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, in order to learn Hindi.

In this inspirational memoir, Rich documents her experiences in India ranging from the bizarre to the frightening to the unexpectedly exhilarating using Hindi as the lens through which she is given a new perspective not only on India, but on the radical way the country and the language itself were changing her. Fascinated by the process, she went on to interview linguistics experts around the world, reporting back from the frontlines of the science wars on what happens in the brain when we learn a new language. Seamlessly combining Rich's courageous (and often hilarious) personal journey with wideranging reporting, Dreaming in Hindi offers an eye-opening account of what learning a new language can teach us about distant worlds and, ultimately, ourselves.

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Personal Photos from Katherine Russell Rich, Author of Dreaming in Hindi
(Click on each image below to see a larger view)

Katherine Russell Rich in the Ancient Fort City of Chittogarh	Rajasthani Ektara Player	Katherine Russell Rich in Sari and Bindi

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From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Rich, the author of The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancer—and Back, recounts in this wonderful memoir her subsequent life's journey: immersing herself in the transformative complexities of learning Hindi. Fired from her New York City magazine job, palpating the possibility of being a full-time writer and tempted by the foolproof out that was traveling to India, Rich ensconced herself in a yearlong language program in Udaipur, in the northwest state of Rajasthan, where with three other students she struggled to get her brain, and tongue, around the disorienting monsoon of words in the total immersion program. A delicate balance of social graces determined success or failure, as the author learned painfully when she felt compelled to relocate from the home of her host family, an extended Jain clan, because of misunderstanding over her nonmarried status. Fluidly interspersed within her witty, tongue-in-cheek account of the nutty fellow students and nosy, however well-meaning, Indian spectators are comments and elucidation on second-language acquisition from experts, and observations while visiting a school for the deaf. Homesick, rattled by the violence, Rich nonetheless arrived at making jokes and actually dreaming in Hindi, and in her deft and spirited prose depicts being literally possessed by words. (July)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (July 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618155457
• ISBN-13: 978-0618155453
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #19,659 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #14 in	Books > Travel > Asia > India
  #61 in	Books > Reference > Words & Language > Study & Teaching

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not an easy book to categorize, July 10, 2009

By	Holly Kincaid "Book addict" (Fishers, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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This book was really three books in one from my perspective:

1) exploration of the mental process of learning language (both first and second) -- very scientific

2) study of the culture of India with some background history

3) the author's personal journey into learning Hindi and what it was like for an American to move to India and live there for one year.

The word that comes to mind when I reflect on the book is "dense". It's jam packed with information and research - much more than I was expecting. It really delves into how the human brain processes language, new experiences and cultures. Many linguists are interviewed after the author's return to the States and their explanations of language aquisition are included. The culture of India (at least her exposure to it) is a wonderful facet of the book and incredibly educational. The reader also goes along on her personal journey as she tries to fit into a different culture - with some successes and some failures plus she chronicals the other Americans she is with and shares their stories as well.

The book also requires work to read (I got out the old yellow highlighter and carried it around with book) since it moves back and forth chronologically as well as moving between themes. It's a very fluid book that isn't "structured" -- actually fits the subject well and reflects the stops and starts experienced by someone out of their comfort zone.

Overall, a truly enjoyable book. It is definitely not for someone who is looking for a fast, light, easy memoir which many are. It takes some study and time to get through. I would recommend it for anyone who is interested in India or language acquisition. The reader must be committed to putting forth effort to enjoy and get something out of it.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book for Those Interested in the Mind as well as India, July 16, 2009

By	Book Fan (California) - See all my reviews

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This is one of the best books I have read in a long time, which I enjoyed on lots of different levels. I enjoy leisure reading that takes me to another time or place, and this one does that. And I enjoy reading that expands my knowledge, such as popular science or history books, and this book does that as well. And the writing is well done.

This is the author's account of her year in India, focused on learning Hindi. But in the tale we learn about her past (early childhood hearing issues, how she came to be interested in Hindi and got started learning, how she earlier had dodged the bullet of medical mortality, etc.) She also writes about the people she lived with, the friends she made, festivals and travels, Hindi and Muslim interactions in the past and present of India, and the social and political events that were happening in India as well as the US during that time. I now feel I have a better understanding of things that are going on in India at present, as well as an appreciation of the Hindi language.

At the same time, this book is a delight for a Cognitive Scientist or anyone interested in the mind, because she intersperses her own experiences of being immersed in a language she only partially knows, with very readable details of work by a number of scientists about various aspects of how language works and how the mind learns a first or a second language. And, unlike too many books today, she has a really good bibliography for tracking down more to read and citations for anyone interested.

There were a few things in her account that it would have been nice to learn more about. Her year in India was about 8 years ago, but the book has just come out now. What has she been doing since then, where can I found out more about her, what has she done with Hindi since then (other than surprise taxi cab drivers)? Additionally, part way through the book, she raised a medical alarm that was never followed up on .... how was that handled and how did it turn out?

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A modern American's "Passage to India", June 12, 2009

By	nycbuyer (nyc) - See all my reviews

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As I read this book, I felt I was in a dream world. The story line floats from theme to theme without any obvious or concrete connection and yet I was drawn in.

It was like the compulsion one feels when upon waking from an intense and seemingly vivid dream: desperately trying to understand what it meant, trying to hang on to each intangible and ephemeral piece. If you can make sense of it before it disappears, you can hold on to the dream. If you don't analyze the dream, it vanishes and two minutes later you can barely remember the dream, much less what it meant.

Even the real-life characters of the book are portrayed in a dream-like quality. They float in and out of the author's narrative. Their flaws are exposed, but softened by the dream-like world in which they exist.

Only when the author moves to the analysis of the experiences does the narrative leave the dream world. These sections are clear, academic, and enlightening. The analyses are scattered incongruously throughout the book and yet add to it's weight and somehow hold it together. Above all they help the linguistically unschooled (me) to grasp and make sense of the dream world.

The whole time I was reading "Dreaming in Hindi", I was trying to understand "where is the author going with this?" and "what is the purpose of this section?". But most of all I was trying to understand why I didn't "get" so much of the story.

As I headed toward the end I started to understand and things started to come together. I remembered that another book had put my head in the same place: E. M. Forster's "Passage to India".

"Dreaming in Hindi" has helped me to better understand Forster's book. Without using the construct of language, Forster was trying to put the Eastern mind into Western mind. What happens in this procedure is reminiscent of the surgery where the doctor switches brains. It doesn't necessarily follow the expected path.

Rich's use of linguistics as the vehicle to translate Indian culture & language for the "Western Hard-Wired Mind" is brilliant. Even though I am not a linguist and have never traveled to India, it worked for me. In a sense, "Dreaming in Hindi" woke me up mentally, while gently transporting me through the dream world of another language and culture.

Rich not only immerses herself in Hindi, but also becomes involved with an Indian school for the deaf. This involvement leads her on what seems to be an after-thought or side quest: to discover if the sign language of the Hindi deaf was evolving. But for me, this side quest became the exclamation point of the book and pulled everything together.

There is definitely something beautifully humorous and profound in learning a language within a language and finding out that it was not the real language. Instead, the language that you had learned was a rough estimate of something far more complex and powerful. To understand this, make sure you read the epilogue.

This book is a must read for all linguistic students and those who endeavor to become bilingual. I also think it should be required reading for students who will be traveling abroad. For those of us who are not, it is a as close as we will ever get to doing so.

I did not give "Dreaming in Hindi" 5 stars because it targets a very specific audience and requires a willingness on the part of the reader to trust that the author is taking them somewhere even when they feel totally lost and are trying to make sense of it all. With this book, I was never sure of where I was going or where I would land. Some folks don't like going on that kind of journey, in fact they resist it.

For me a five star book reaches a larger audience and does not require that kind of commitment from the reader. But if you revel in "blind" journeys, you will absolutely love this book.

If you are the kind of person who wakes up from the dream and could care less what it meant, maybe this is not the dream for you.