Native Tongue

Series · 3 books · 1984-1994

By Suzette Haden Elgin

Books in series

Native Tongue

1984

Called "fascinating" by the New York Times upon its first publication in 1984, Native Tongue won wide critical praise and cult status, and has often been compared to the futurist fiction of Margaret Atwood. Set in the twenty-second century, the novel tells of a world where women are once again property, denied civil rights and banned from public life. Earth's wealth depends on interplanetary commerce with alien races, and linguists—a small, clannish group of families—have become the ruling elite by controlling all interplanetary communication. Their women are used to breed perfect translators for all the galaxies' languages. Nazareth Chornyak, the most talented linguist of the family, is exhausted by her constant work translating for trade organizations, supervising the children's language education, running the compound, and caring for the elderly men. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth comes to discover is that a slow revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them from men's control.

The Judas Rose

1987

An instant cult classic upon first publication, Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue trilogy has earned wide critical acclaim, shocking and captivating a loyal readership among science fiction and women's literature audiences alike. Sequel to the enormously popular Native Tongue, The Judas Rose continues Elgin's gripping vision of a frightening, male-dominated world where the women of Earth are virtually enslaved. Once again, this group of women—and the nonviolent yet transformative power of language—is called upon to challenge Earth's violent, patriarchal order. Their revolutionary tool is Laadan—a secret women's language created to free them from men's control and make resistance possible for all women. In The Judas Rose, the time has come to take Laadan from underground and spread its revolutionary power to women everywhere—in part, through a group of nuns inside the Roman Catholic Church. But when a handful of horrified priests uncover the women's sabotage they move to stamp it out with an undercover female agent of their own.

Earthsong

1994

In Earthsong, the trilogy’s long-awaited finale, the Aliens have abandoned Earth, taking their technologies with them and plunging the planet into economic and ecological disaster. Devastated, the women decide to take their failed Láadan project back underground, desperately seeking guidance from their long-dead foremothers. The women discover an ingenious solution to the problem of human violence and seek to spread their knowledge—but has their final solution come too late?

Author

Suzette Haden Elgin

Author · 26 books

Suzette Haden Elgin was an American science fiction author. She founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and is considered an important figure in the field of science fiction constructed languages. Elgin was also a linguist; she published non-fiction, of which the best-known is the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense series. Born in 1936 in Missouri, Elgin attended the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in the 1960s, and began writing science fiction in order to pay tuition. She has a Ph.D. in linguistics, and was the first UCSD student to ever write two dissertations (on English and Navajo). She created the engineered language Láadan for her Native Tongue science fiction series. A grammar and dictionary was published in 1985. She is a supporter of feminist science fiction, saying "women need to realize that SF is the only genre of literature in which it's possible for a writer to explore the question of what this world would be like if you could get rid of [X], where [X] is filled in with any of the multitude of real world facts that constrain and oppress women. Women need to treasure and support science fiction." [1] In addition, she published works of shorter fiction. Overlying themes in her work include feminism, linguistics and the impact of language, and peaceful coexistence with nature. Many of her works also draw from her Ozark background and heritage. Elgin became a professor at her alma mater's cross-town rival, San Diego State University (SDSU). She retired in 1980.