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.

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[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?