Reading with Style discussion

20.7 Exophonic

In honor of Elif Shafak's birthday, read a book written by one of the authors listed in the Category:Exophonic writers at wikipedia.com and the List of exophonic writers in the main section of that page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

Please post any questions or comments about task 20.7 in this thread.

Kate and I learned a new word!

Exophony is the practice of writing in a language that is not one's own. Some exophonic authors are bilingual or multilingual from their childhood years while others write in an acquired language. Although the phenomenon is not new the term was coined in 2007.

I’d never heard of that word either, I’m glad to have learned something new!

Does the book we read need to have been originally written in a language other than the author’s first language, or is any work by an author on the list acceptable? I’m thinking of Samuel Beckett and wondering if Watt (originally written in his first language, English) is okay or if I should choose one of the novels he originally wrote in French.

Any book by one of the list authors will work for this task.

Thank you!

Looking over the list, I wondered if I had anything on my shelves by André Brink. I have two on my wish list and A Dry White Season, which I've read. Not only read, but to which I've given 5-stars. Further, in my review, I say this may be one of my top 10 reads of all time. It is on the 1001 list, for styles. Re-reading my review, it would seem there are aspects which would make it non-linear and a 4.06 rating.

If you haven't considered this for 20.7, please do.

A lot of the East Indian/Pakistani authors’ first language is not English. Although those families who can afford to send their children do learn English very young, most children do not learn it. When I lived in India there were live-in employees to run the household. Some had British grandfathers and even had English surnames and were bi-or tri-lingual. i e Adrian and Catherine Garvin, Prem and Ruby Massey and Patras Williams, Others were raised in families who had converted to Christianity during the British Raj and usually had English names from characters in the Bible or Catholic saints ie Robert David, Robina Bernard, Eunice Peter, (usually if you meet someone whose last name is Matthew rather than Matthews, Peter instead of Peters or Stephen instead of Stephens, that is probably the case.) then the well to do sent their children to convent schools or other private British schools including posh boarding schools in the Himalayas. The same for Pakistanis.
Until 1978, the state of Goa was a Portuguese territory and the earlier generations grew up learning Portuguese as an early second language before learning English.
There were five French Colonies were the first learned second language was French. They incorporated into The State of India in the 1950’s.
Then there was the big and violent Partition in 1947 when Pakistan separated from India, knocked Urdu off as the dominant language in Delhi to become Hindi, with many Hindi speakers leaving Pakistan.
Then to top it all off, each state has its own native language as well as many tribal languages making a total of about 300 languages but only 22 are “official”
I had a staff of 24 living with us, and these languages could all be heard at one time or another. British English (definitely not Texan or even American English), Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, Tibetan, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Bihari, Kashmiri, Kannada and Oriya and those are the only ones I know of! Not all knew Hindi, the main language in Delhi and quite a few didn’t know English.
We also had Hindus, Roman Catholics, Mormons, Pentecostals, Buddhists, Sikhs, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Parsees, and BaHai.

Anyway my point being if they were born and raised in India, most likely English is a second language. There was a movement going about writing in one’s native language and a controversy about should you explain to English readers certain Hindi phrases in the text. Example Chowkidar (a guard for security) because it will interrupt the flow and to translate into English word loses the flavor of “Mother India”

I know Tuen knows about this and if there are natives or “Desi”s out there that can correct me, please do.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni I saw in both India and In Texas. I saw her in our local library . We were living in the same town as she was teaching at University of Houston.
Her first language is Bengali but being of the educated classes learned English early.

Only the authors on the lists will work for this task.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni I saw in both India and In Texas. I saw her in our local library with her little boy. We were living in the same town as she was teaching at University of Houston.
Her first language is Bengali but being of the educated classes learned English early

Kiran Desai grew up in Delhi. She’s bilingual. She visited the American School in Delhi and spoke to my daughters English class.

Sashi Tharoor was born in London but his parents’ first language was Malayalam and they returned to India when he was two.He is also a member of Parliament.

Kushwant Singh native language is Punjabi although his father worked for the British Raj and Singh was sent to the British Delhi Modern School in Delhi.

R K Narayan spoke Tamil, English and Sanskrit

Aravind Adiga Had parents whose first language was Kannada and Tamil as well as English

Anita Desai according to Wikipedia “ She grew up speaking Hindi with her neighbours, and only German at her home. She also spoke Bengali, Urdu and English out of her house. She first learned to read and write in English at school and as a result”

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Only the authors on the lists will work for this task."

Whoops sorry! I got carried away looking up all these authors, I didn’t see your reply about list only until I finally finished my post! Sorry! Oh well, might be good to know for a future task or if you are a fan of Trivia