On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues

by B.A. Van Sise, Crisosto Apache (contributor), DeLanna Studi (contributor)

Through art photography and prose, this book addresses the fragility, beauty, and cultural value of preserving endangered languages, particularly Indigenous languages, at a time when Indigenous and diversity issues are at the forefront of our national conversations.

In a groundbreaking project turned into a national touring exhibition, endangered-language speaker, poet, and photojournalist B. A. Van Sise worked with endangered-language speakers, learners, and revitalizers across three years and an entire continent to showcase some of the natural beauties of their languages and lands, highlighting, in particular, American diversity and its many Indigenous communities.

Augmented by nine contributors from diverse cultural groups, On the National Language is a journey into both the challenges and opportunities faced by revitalization efforts, as well as a testament to the beauty and poetry of these many languages themselves.
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Winner of the Anthem Award for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Finalist for the Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography
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Our verdict? Get it. A rich survey— author and photographer Van Sise offers a rich profile of the many languages found in the United States [and] does a great job of contextualizing the common tragedy of language loss.

-Kirkus Reviews

Author and photographer Van Sise, known for creating "visual poems" by combining stunning portraiture with concise and striking captions, collaborates with actors and writers to document the dozens of languages disappearing across the U.S. and to "highlight just how many of these languages exist and just how much beauty we stand to lose in losing them." …An already ambitious project [of] generous scope and unparalleled execution, this is breathtaking testimony to the demographic richness of the U.S. and the beautiful diversity of its linguistic landscape.

-Diego Báez, Booklist starred review

In a dazzling interplay of words and images, B. A. Van Sise’s On the National Language conjures the richness of North America’s endangered languages- there are cultural summaries, representative words, and evocative photographs of the one hundred speakers, as well as poetry and bits of memoir. survived after being “tucked up in corners, hidden under blankets, rolled up in tongues.” Van Sise describes an exciting cultural programming renaissance that’s reaching new speakers and some tricky linguistics detective work that resurrects languages that went generations without being spoken. The book shimmies from Alaskan Russian to South Californian Tongva to Georgia’s Afro-Seminole Creole, showcasing the diversity of amazing words and concepts among different traditions. This creative and important collection of words you never knew you really needed is best summed up by the Bukhari word amonati—“something you hold and keep safe for someone else.”

-Rachel Jagareski, Foreword Reviews

As a photographer and a linguist, Van Sise has a few tricks up his sleeve when deciding how to convey the visual and literal aspects of projects. His photographer-side delights in performing sleight-of-hand visual techniques which lead the viewer into attractively complex narratives. The linguist-side places language in the spotlight too – so people will learn and understand that these languages aren’t extinct, these people aren’t extinct. And that the project is incredibly rich.... The ‘person’ of the language speaker and the deeper meanings of their linguistic anchors are revealed by B.A.’s innovative, creative, and humorous vision in ways that occasionally take you by surprise but always feel authentic.

Witty, and subtle and smart. Interplay between signage, language, the literal and metaphoric meanings, all of it, comes across visually in a flash, like dry lightning at dusk.

-Cary Benbow, f/stop Magazine

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, History, Language

176 pages, Hardcover

Published September 28, 2024

About the author

B.A. Van Sise is an author and photographic artist with three monographs: the visual poetry anthology Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry with Mary-Louise Parker, Invited to Life: After the Holocaust with Neil Gaiman and On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues with DeLanna Studi and Linda Hogan. His artwork has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Center for Creative Photography, the Skirball Cultural Center, the Woody Guthrie Center, and the Rockefeller Arts Center, as well as in group exhibitions at the Peabody Essex Museum, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the Los Angeles Center of Photography and the Whitney Museum of American Art; a number of his portraits of American poets are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. His literary work has been featured in Poets & Writers, The North American Review, Nowhere, the Los Angeles Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Southampton Review, Eclectica, The Night Heron Barks, Cutleaf, Hayden’s Ferry Review, thimble, the Santa Clara Review and The Intrepid Times, among many others, and he is a frequent reviewer of poetry and photography titles for the New York Journal of Books.

In photography he has been a finalist for the Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography, and is a Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation grant recipient, a two time Prix de la Photographie Paris award-winner, a New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Photography, and a winner of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences' Anthem Awards for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. For nonfiction he has been a finalist for the Travel Media Awards for feature writing and is a winner of the Lascaux Prize for Nonfiction, and for poetry he has been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize and a winner of the Colonel Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards and a two-time winner of the Independent Book Publishers Awards gold medal.

Reviews

[Karina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is magnificent at introducing readers to the various endangered languages present here in the United States. Languages are made of words (yes), but they may be made of people more. The book guides us through the extremes of the landscape: There are languages with thousands of speakers and languages that already died out, yet are being resusitated by dedicated individuals. There are languages only spoken by elders and languages with their first young speakers in generations. Each language is handled with reverence, paired with a phrase and with a portrait. The portraits are of the individuals who are continuing to speak. The phrases on the opposite page are chosen by them. And their portraits are in conversation with these chosen words. The result? Visual poetry! And let’s not forget: there are verbal poems included throughout, too. There is just so much to savor, here. And the hope that results is tangible. I am in awe of these people who are keeping their languages alive. I am in awe of how rich in culture and history and perspective a language could be. And I am in awe, because this book only focused on the States! This is but a peek into a vast world. What other languages and stories are out there?

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher!

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and important! These stunning photos are not only a pleasure to look at but thought provoking; rich with depth and symbolism. Most importantly this book gives a look into many over-looked and marginalized cultures and encourages the reader to learn more and become an advocate for dying and endangered languages, realizing that language represents so much or who we are and what we believe about ourselves.

[Seher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this!

This is an excellent book and an important one for that matter. While the poetry included is lovely tis book is important in the sense that it highlights that languages can be brought back from the brink, that for everything lost, something can be regained.

I don't think I cared for the formatting though; it made it feel like a coffee table book, something to be used as decor and left unopened.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important, informative descriptions of endangered languages. Stunning photographs.

[Hazel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book that is long overdue, but also just a beautiful book that anyone can enjoy leafing through and learning along the way. It is shocking how many languages used to exist that have already gone extinct. So many more are incredibly endangered, with only a handful of native speakers still alive. We forget that language has not always been monolithic the way it is for many people today. This book documents many of the endangered indigenous languages in a format that is engaging and emotional.

For each language, we are given the area(s), a brief explanation of the language and what is being done to preserve it (particularly if there are any education programs or efforts being made in the local community to resuscitate use of the language), and a single word in the language with the translation in English. On the opposite page we're treated to a photo of someone (or in a few cases, multiple people) who represent that language in some way. What's really beautiful is how the images not only capture the essence of that person and the language, but especially how the word is intentionally chosen to draw a deeper connection with the story being told in the photo. There's a lot going on in each spread, and it invites you to sit with each individual word and experience how it exists in that photo and in the world around us.

I'll be buying several copies of this book as holiday presents this year for friends.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this eARC for unbiased review.

[Clara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon receiving this book I spent the whole afternoon going through the pages of this book, fascinated that there existed so, so many languages and indigenous cultures in the US. I’m grateful to the author for putting all of this information in one place and presenting it in such a beautiful manner!

I received this book as a giveaway.