In Other Words

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