In Other Words

I thought this book would satisfy my Travel Memoir requirement in the Read Harder Challenge, but it wasn't really about travel. Rather, the author describes learning Italian, loving it so much she moves to Italy so she can immerse herself in the language. A native English speaker, she wrote this book in Italian, and then it was translated by Ann Goldstein (Elena Ferrante's translator). I am wondering why I haven't read Jhumpa Lahiri before–this was an excellent book. More books to add to my list!

Jhumpa Lahiri first spoke Bengali. Then she learned English.

She became a writer. A good writer. She won prizes. Big prizes. All in English.

One day she wanted to learn Italian. She started. She decided to move to Italy. She did. Then she wanted to write in Italian. She did.

She never felt so free as when she felt constrained to write in Italian.

Pleasant surprise to discover that the 2nd half of the audiobook is actually the book narration in Italian. So I was done earlier than expected.

In Other Words is Lahiri's exploration into what it takes for a writer to learn a new language during adulthood, and to use that language for her creative writing. Lahiri grew up speaking Bengali, but English is the only language she ever learned to read and write. She falls in love with the Italian language, and then makes it her goal to learn it properly, even moves to Rome for it.

Even though parts of her linguistic journey resonated with me, I was slightly put off by the tone she used. She made it sound as if her endeavour was her own personal hill to climb, and that is was a struggle, somehow disregarding how it is a reality for millions of people out there every day. Who - given, are not authors like her - but also have to or want to acquire new languages late in life. Plus she has way too many examples of feeling offended by having people misunderstand her, or mistake her for a non-Italian speaker. She also doesn't seem to take any pleasure from being multilingual, but rather drops one language for the other. I guess this is about the deeper-than-usual entanglement of a writer to her writing-language of choice.

2.5