Tongues

On Longing and Belonging through Language

edited by Ayelet Tsabari; Eufemia Fantetti & Leonarda Carranza

tagged: essays, canadian

Description

In this collection of deeply personal essays, twenty-six writers explore their connection with language, accents, and vocabularies, and contend with the ways these can be used as both bridge and weapon. Some explore the way power and privilege affect language learning, especially the shame and exclusion often felt by non-native English speakers in a white, settler, colonial nation. Some confront the pain of losing a mother tongue or an ancestral language along with the loss of community and highlight the empowerment that comes with reclamation. Others celebrate the joys of learning a new language and the power of connection. All underscore how language can offer both transformation and collective healing.

Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language is a vital anthology that opens a compelling dialogue about language diversity and probes the importance of language in our identity and the ways in which it shapes us.

With contributions by: Kamal Al-Solaylee, Jenny Heijun Wills, Karen McBride, Melissa Bull, Leonarda Carranza, Adam Pottle, Kai Cheng Thom, Sigal Samuel, Rebecca Fisseha, Hege Anita Jakobsen Lepri, Logan Broeckaert, Taslim Jaffer, Ashley Hynd, Jagtar Kaur Atwal, Téa Mutonji, Rowan McCandless, Sahar Golshan, Camila Justino, Amanda Leduc, Ayelet Tsabari, Carrianne Leung, Janet Hong, Danny Ramadan, Sadiqa de Meijer, Jónína Kirton, and Eufemia Fantetti.

About the Authors

Ayelet Tsabari

AYELET TSABARI is the author of the memoir in essays The Art of Leaving, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the Vine National Canadian Jewish Book Award for Non-Fiction. It was also chosen as a Best Book of 2019 by Apple Books and Kirkus Reviews. Tsabari was a co-editor, with Leonarda Carranza and Eufemia Fantetti, of the anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language.

Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction. It was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice book and was a Kirkus Review Best Debut Fiction of 2016 title. It was also nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Ayelet Tsabari is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio and the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. She teaches in the MFA creative writing program at the University of Guelph, the MFA in Fiction program at the University of King’s College and the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.

Eufemia Fantetti

EUFEMIA FANTETTI is a graduate of The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Her short fiction collection, A Recipe for Disaster and Other Unlikely Tales of Love, was runner up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and winner of the F.G. Bressani Prize. She is a winner of the Event Magazine Non-Fiction Contest, and a three-time winner of the annual Accenti Writing Contest. She co-edited the anthology, Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language. She teaches at Humber College and the University of Guelph-Humber and co-edits The Humber Literary Review. She lives in Toronto.

Leonarda Carranza was born in San Salvador and currently lives in Brampton, Canada, part of the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Justice Education from the University of Toronto. She is the winner of Briarpatch Magazine's Writing in the Margins contest and Room's 2018 short forms contest.

Awards

Short-listed, Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Winner, IPPY Awards
Winner, Foreword INDIES

Editorial Review

“The collection is an extraordinary achievement, one that succeeds in creating a colourful tapestry out of the hundreds if not thousands of languages that live within the soul of the inhabitants of this land we call Canada.” —New Canadian Media

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