Akiva Reads

by Suzette Haden Elgin

Update 2022: In retrospect, this is massively second-wave in every way (the gender binary and patriarchy are literally universal? come on) and that wouldn't age well with me. I'm curious whether it would fatally undermine everything else I found interesting about it. I'm due a reread.

2014 review:

GOSH WOW I could not put Native Tongue down.

It did not start promisingly. The first page is just the text of two 1991 amendments to the Constitution that revoke all rights for women. And we're supposed to believe that's just the way it is for another 200 years, to the point where our story takes place. This is hyperbolic (granted, I was born in 1988: maybe the women's rights movement was more precarious in the mid-80s than seems possible to me), but if you can accept it as a premise and outlast two pages, Native Tongue will never test your credulity again.

I guess it makes sense to compare it to [b:The Handmaid's Tale|38447|The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1578028274l/38447.SY75.jpg|1119185], but Native Tongue is way better and way more interesting. edit 9/26: I think I know why I liked Native Tongue better: the women in Handmaid's Tale were so beaten down and hopeless and helpless that it was painful to read. The degradation went on and on and on. And that's certainly a thing, but I much preferred reading about the women of Native Tongue, who are always surprising you with their cleverness, carefully-tended knowledge, resilience, and resistance.

The politics is maybe a little outdated---devotion to separatism, very heteronormative, not much mention of race, etc.---but most books from the time period age a lot worse, and it generally works.

Love hard sci fi but sick of the white male "canon"? This is the book for you. I know almost nothing about linguistics and I learned a lot; I'm sure someone who was trained would have a lot of fun using a deeper understanding of the terms and theories to expand on the world. I've heard of Láadan before (who hasn't spent a couple dozen hours reading about conlangs on the internet?), but I didn't realize it was this book, and I actually squeaked in delight when the language is finally named, about halfway in.

I generally liked Elgin's take on Aliens, but was annoyed that the humanoid ones all seem to have a very Earthlike male/female sex-and-gender binary. This could have ruined my enjoyment of the bit where humans are shown to have rituals just as ridiculous as being ritually absent for 18 minutes when offended, but I decided the Jeelods just noticed that humans have a ridiculous hangup about talking to organisms with two lumps on their chests, and created some Madonna-inspired falsies to mess with them.

Elgin wrote at least 90% of the texts that start each chapter, which is immensely more satisfying and interesting than the usual mix of abused Shakespeare quotes and Gnomic Utterances.