num_pages: 327
description: Called "fascinating" by the New York Times upon its first publication in 1984, Native Tongue won wide critical praise and cult status, and has often been compared to the futurist fiction of Margaret Atwood. Set in the twenty-second century, the novel tells of a world where women are once again property, denied civil rights and banned from public life. Earth's wealth depends on interplanetary commerce with alien races, and linguists --a small, clannish group of families --have become the ruling elite by controlling all interplanetary communication. Their women are used to breed perfect translators for all the galaxies' languages. Nazareth Chornyak, the most talented linguist of the family, is exhausted by her constant work translating for trade organizations, supervising the children's language education, running the compound, and caring for the elderly men. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth comes to discover is that a slow revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them from men's control."Native Tongue brings to life not only the possibility of a women's language, but a rationale for one,"-Village Voice"Elgin takes up more than linguistics, of course-everything from religion to sexâ¦the story is absolutely compelling."-Women's Review of BooksSuzette Haden Elgin is author of twelve science fiction novels and is widely know for her best-selling series The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense and for The Grandmother Principles. She is director of the Ozark Center for Language Studies and is professor emerita of linguistics at San Diego State University.
language: English
title: Native Tongue
titlecomplete: Native Tongue (Native Tongue Trilogy)
characters: Nazareth Chornyak
genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Linguistics, Womens, Language, Science Fiction Fantasy, Feminism, Fantasy, Dystopia
ratings_count: 3914
series: Native Tongue
awards: awardedAt: 1609488000000
name: Premi Ictineu
category: Millor novel·la traduïda (ex aequo)
publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY