An electrifying new side of the National Book Award Winner Yoko Tawada: her first book of essays in English. I am trying to learn, with my tongue, sounds that are unfamiliar to me. A foreign-sounding word learned out of curiosity is not “imitation” per se. All of these things I learn leave traces that slowly grow to coexist with my accent. And that balancing act goes on changing indefinitely. How perfect that Yoko Tawada’s first essay in English dives deep into her lifelong fascination with the possibilities opened up by cross-hybridizing languages. Tawada famously writes in both Japanese and German, but her interest in language reaches beyond any mere dichotomy. The term “exophonic,” which she first heard in Senegal, has a special allure for the author: “I was already familiar with similar terms, 'immigrant literature,’ or ‘creole literature,’ but ‘exophonic’ had a much broader meaning, referring to the general experience of existing outside of one’s mother tongue.” Tawada revels in explorations of cross-cultural and intra-language possibilities (and along the way deals several nice sharp raps to the primacy of English). The accent here, as in her fiction, is the art of drawing closer to the world through defamiliarization. Never entertaining a received thought, Tawada seeks the still-to-be-discovered truths, as well as what might possibly be invented entirely whole cloth. Exophony opens a new vista into Yoko Tawada’s world, and delivers more of her signature erudite wit―at once cross-grained and generous, laser-focused and multidimensional, slyly ironic and warmly companionable.
Author
Yōko Tawada (多和田葉子 Tawada Yōko, born March 23, 1960) is a Japanese writer currently living in Berlin, Germany. She writes in both Japanese and German. Tawada was born in Tokyo, received her undergraduate education at Waseda University in 1982 with a major in Russian literature, then studied at Hamburg University where she received a master's degree in contemporary German literature. She received her doctorate in German literature at the University of Zurich. In 1987 she published Nur da wo du bist da ist nichts—Anata no iru tokoro dake nani mo nai (A Void Only Where You Are), a collection of poems in a German and Japanese bilingual edition. Tawada's Missing Heels received the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 1991, and The Bridegroom Was a Dog received the Akutagawa Prize in 1993. In 1999 she became writer-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four months. Her Suspect on the Night Train won the Tanizaki Prize and Ito Sei Literary Prize in 2003. Tawada received the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 1996, a German award to foreign writers in recognition of their contribution to German culture, and the Goethe Medal in 2005. (from Wikipedia)
