let's do a book group meeting here!

[maevele]

Seriously, having missed the beer and marmalade meeting for Native Tongue, I'd really love to hear the thoughts of those who read it. I shouldn't start, because srsly, i can go for days on that book.

doesn't have to just be b&m folk that discuss, i know i have some other fans of that book on here.

What did you think? Like it? Hate it? Problems? Favorite parts?


if possble,comment on my lj instead of dw for ease of keeping it inone place

Comments

[rhipowered.livejournal.com]

If I don't come back and poke at this, yell at me. I love Native Tongue.

[were-duck.livejournal.com]

you can always track the entry to keep up on the conversation!

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Okay so out of the people there, I was the only one who had read it and like it! I was not prepared to dfend my position, so I think I kind of failed (sorry).

I can see how the characters are pretty one-dimensional (men = evil, sexist! women = piouis, always know better, etc.). In that way, it's very Second Wave, I guess?

We all loved the chapter where Michaela kills her husband - we thought the writing style was elevated there, and that it would even work well as a short story.

I liked it and want to read more; I think I'll be able to say more by building off of what other people say, too??

[were-duck.livejournal.com]

I haven't finished it yet (but don't mind spoilers at all, since I pretty much got the cliff notes at book club). I didn't love it to pieces, but I think I would have if I had come to it earlier--I wrote a big section of my undergrad on feminist dys/utopias, so this didn't cover a whole lot of ground that I hadn't already seen in the Holdfast Chronicles or Gate to Women's Country or Handmaid's Tale.

I liked the premise well enough that I would read some sequels... I felt about this book the way I felt about the first of the Holdfast books--that it paid way too much attention to the men and the sexist things they thought in order to set up for the women's revolution. Which is interesting in a way... but I would rather have heard more about the women--how this language they were creating would help them revolt, what the language does for them, how they cope and how they support each other. I'm assuming the later books do that?

Also I have a knee-jerk reaction to essentialist feminism--obviously this book is a product of its time and political milieu, but then again so am I... and I have a very difficult time accepting any premise, even a dystopia, that pits "men" against "women", because where does it account for those who are both or neither or some other combination, you know?

I DID love the aliens and the idea of Encodings and the interfaces--again, I would have liked to have seen more about these things!

[rhipowered.livejournal.com]

I agree on the topic of essentialist feminism here...it's very of that era and that makes me itch. I also have read crit (by Yonmei) that it's far too Americentric, but I don't know how I feel about that.

At the same time as the faults though, I think there's some new ground on the method of women changing the world. Personally, I find the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to have some truth, even if linguistics has apparently moved on from there in some ways. Creating the world through language (and this becomes more clear in The Judas Rose) and the idea that there are not English words for very true feelings...that's particularly powerful in my mind.

[were-duck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I though the concept of a women's language has a lot of potential, but unfortunately the first book didn't sell me on it... but like I said, I'll be open to picking up the sequels if they ever land on my bookshelf :)

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

I read this book many years ago not too long after it came out. I dearly love it, and the two books that came after them, even with their flaws. Nazareth is awesome. I had to squee about NT at my Worldcon panel on traditional women's crafts and fantasy (and SF), the idea of the elderly linguist women planning cultural change in a knitting/crocheting circle is just priceless.