Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language ed. by Eufemia Fantetti, Leonarda Carranza, and Ayelet Tsabari

Abstract

Reviewed by: Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language ed. by Eufemia Fantetti, Leonarda Carranza, and Ayelet Tsabari Marc Lynch (bio) Fantetti, Eufemia, Leonarda Carranza, and Ayelet Tsabari, editors. Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language. Book*hug, 2021. Essais Series no. 25. CAD $25. Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language is a compilation of twenty-six short essays on the confluences between heritage, language, and [End Page 163] identity. These dynamic essays explore an array of different experiences ranging from the grief that emerges from losing one's mother tongue to the navigation of gendered language in medicine. Connecting all of these diverse experiences is the concept of alienation—the disconnection between father and daughter, loss of one's homeland and culture, the ways that English as a colonial language constricts identities. Each of these essays concerns different ways the body metamorphosizes with language, wrestling with concepts of family, acceptance, disillusionment, and diaspora. All the while, each essay remains fresh due to editors Eufemia Fantetti, Leonarda Carranza, and Ayelet Tsabari's intuitive organization, which enables a more visceral connection between language, diaspora, displacement, and connectivity. There are quite a few overlaps between essays that, rather than producing repetition, create a thematic resonance. Many of the essays were written or collected during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which becomes a quirky link between disparate experiences and marks a unique historical period. In fact, these subtle connections provide a cohesiveness that isn't typical in essay collections of this kind. Additionally, the majority of the authors occupy marginalized spheres—from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, persons of colour) to LGBTQ2S (Lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, two spirit) to people with disability. The effect is quite extraordinary in terms of how these authors articulate their struggles with language and place as a means of dismantling prevailing notions of normalcy. One of the central thematic threads in the collection is the way the authors submit a challenge directly to readers, asking them to question conventional patterns of reading and publishing that restrict marginalized writers. The authors see these conventions as perpetuating a restrictive system of monolingualism under the argument that having multiple languages in a text would make said text restrictive and inaccessible; contrary to this assumption, Tongues shows just how rich and engaging a multi-lingual text can be. The authors' connection with language (whether native or ancestral) becomes an entry point for readers, and the linguistic variations a site of intrigue that is both metaphorically expansive and generative. These types of conventions, therefore, eliminate some of the readers' responsibility, particularly as it comes to bilingual authors and the reduced poetic, linguistic, and imaginative potentialities that they can bring to the table. Rebecca Fisseha, for example, discusses how using italics to signal foreignness as a standard of practice does nothing more than refuse difference and serve privilege. Similarly, writer Ashley Hynd grapples with the difficult moral space the reader occupies, asking to whom is the translator responsible: general readers or specific communities? This concept provocatively overlaps with the struggles [End Page 164] BIPOC authors face, given that they are often intrinsically at odds with the white, cis, male reader: as Carrianne Leung, a writer who was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Scarborough, tells us, "We know the enormity of what we are writing against. The readers are sometimes locked in their own world of mythology. This narrative that arrives from my body may already be at odds with the reader's mythology" (175). Although these essayists are not responding to each other, they all speak to larger modes of diminishment and suggest that the repression of bodies themselves is not just the product of the forced adoption of a colonial language (English, French, Spanish, etc.) but is part and parcel of the publishing industry's standards of practice. In terms of its geographic scope, Tongues captures a large number of diasporic perspectives, particularly those connected to global movement and migration. Many of the essays articulate the complications of a conflicted sense of identity that is in flux because of a diverse set of histories and contexts. Often, the writers enunciate a deep sense of conflict; they suggest that...