Mother Tongue

This is a tricky book to review. It has a nice writing style that draws the reader in. It is an interesting concept, of traveling the world to different places to immerse in the languages. A lot of the descriptions of places, and particularly food, made me wish I could travel there right now. And I learned a lot about language acquisition. But there was something lurking in the attitude behind the adventure that sort of irked me. I also realize that this was an experiment for Christine Gilbert and her family, so I don't want to judge them too harshly; however, the way Gilbert approached her experience in China in particular bothered me. There can be really cool things that come out of dropping into a new place without knowing what to expect and figuring it out as you go, but it seemed like their family dropped into Beijing and then were shocked by the pollution and cold, which essentially trapped them in their apartment and they didn't actually experience life in China. Then the cultural barriers they experienced frustrated them so much that they just suddenly left. Cultural adjustment is always going to be difficult, but from the start, they could have had a much better understanding of even the climate they were moving into, and maybe that would have led to different choices and they could have had a better experience. And instead of seeing it that way, it seemed like Gilbert was just soured on China for the rest of time. I think there's some really interesting storytelling coming through that experience, but again, it was just sort of tainted for me by the attitude behind it.