Exophony p2
ARE THERE WRITERS (LITERATURE WRITERS) WHO WRITE IN A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE TO THEIR OWN?
How many? Do they write correctly? Is the switch convenient? What languages do they speak and in which language are they writing?
I’ll stop asking. I can always inquire things I won’t be able to answer later.
LET’S VOOGLE IT
Exo: from outside
Phonos: voice
And it is a subject offered by the Warwick University!
EXOPHONY.
All about authors who don’t write in their mother tongues.
Imagine my face when I discovered that’s what I’m doing when writing poetry in a language I’m not supposed to be any good at or use better than any college kid. Oh, misspelling I always do that in Spanish too. Corrector and the bad use of thumbs are partially responsible. Plus, my laziness to get up and fetch a dictionary… Right, I take it up from the bookshelf ONLY when it is a must. Or there’s enough signal to browse it.
HOW MANY? WHO?
The list is quite looooong in Wiki. I don’t really know from any respectable article[1] but just for a taste:
THOSE WHO TOOK ENGLISH:
- Vladimir Nabokov, Russian (he spoke French too).
- Jack Kerouac, joual (Quebec’s French variant); he finally migrated back to French
- Joseph Conrad, Polish, ( French too). He might have said something like: “l’Anglais m’est toujours une langue étrangère“/ “English is forever a foreign language to me”. You judge.
- Khalil Gibran, Arabic.
- Khaleed Hosseini, Arabic.
- Edwige Danticat, Creole and French[2].
THOSE WHO ABANDONED ENGLISH:
- Samuel Beckett, En attendant Godot[3].
- Jumpa Lahiri, Bengali and Italian “the first time I really feel the freedom to express myself as I want to.[4]”
THE ONES WHO LANDED IN FRENCH:
- Milan Kundera, Czech. He said, he should be in the French section in book stores and libraries.
- Agota Kristoff, Hungarian.
- Emil Cioran, Rumanian.
Have you read any of them? Are they good? Do you think to write in a different language creates identity prejudices? Interested in reading the whole list in Wiki[5]?
Have you ever thought you needed to switch languages to attain the writing you’re striving for? Pasto kalo.
[1] Lies, there’s one. https://www.americathebilingual.com/other-tongue-writers-who-write-in-a-language-not-their-own/
[2] Three, three women in a long list of names!
[3] Attendez, attendant…waiting for.
[4] https://www.americathebilingual.com/other-tongue-writers-who-write-in-a-language-not-their-own/
[5] Will I ever make it up there?
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