#multilingual writers

[marchessa]

Let's appreciate fic writers who write in a language that's not their first. Because they go that extra step, and put themselves out to share what they write, and let me tell you it's not easy (or rewarding at all sometimes)

[fictionfriday]

Finally, take off

It ended. How many more times were they going to do this dance?

How can this roller coaster be love? Wasn’t it supposed to settle at some point? Couldn’t it become a gentle hammock?

The short answer is no. Not possible. Incompatible. Never.

We almost made it this time. He had gotten his dream job, as a school librarian, in one of the inner city junior high schools, and I thought, finally, take off. This was it.

“Honey, let’s go to the movies tonight.” I said.

“Baby, I can’t. Going for drinks— you know I gotta get to know these people.”

“Sure.” I said.

A variation of this convo took place as on a loop for weeks. And then a very different conversation begun: the silent freeze. Questions met with one-word answers. Kisses, unanswered. The end announcing itself. Should I place the period to this story? Or should it be an exclamation point?

In the end, there were no raised voices. We didn’t even speak. I packed my bags and left on one of the many evenings he was“getting to know people.” He didn’t call. And, surprisingly, I didn’t care.

The roller coaster ride was over. Next: that nice hammock.

[millionsmillions]

For me, language was a kind of initiation into multiple realities. For if one language could be certain of a table’s gender and another couldn’t be bothered, then what was true of the world was intimately tied, not to some platonic ideal, but to our way of expressing it.

Ana Menéndez on being a multilingual writer in the twenty-first century.