Mother Tongue

ABSTRACT

In language studies, mother tongue is linked to culture—its literature, artifacts, wisdom, generational ties, its jokes and proverbs, the names of flowers. A mother tongue carries the archive of one’s own history—a sense of belonging at the heart of identity, one’s central core. Language is among the first bonds between mother and child, words forging intimacy and communication. Yet, what happens when a mother tongue is associated with war and trauma? When language conveys displacement or the reenactment of a too-painful past? This essay explores the impact of growing up with a mother who suppressed her mother tongue and a daughter’s search for the language of home that followed.

KEYWORDS:

• Language
• war
• women
• dislocation
• mother
• home

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexandra Viets

Alexandra Viets is a writer/screenwriter and journalist whose work focuses on women and dislocation. Her first feature-length screenplay, Cotton Mary, won a New York Foundation for the Arts award and was produced by Merchant Ivory. Her film/theater reviews and essays have appeared in publications such as The International Herald Tribune/NYT, The Far Eastern Economic Review and the Asia Wall Street Journal. Viets has taught in the MFA programs at Towson University’s Department of Theater Arts and at The American University in Washington, DC, specializing in literature and film. She currently teaches in the MA in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. Excerpts from her memoir entitled, Maryna, After the War, have been published in Thin Air, Nowhere Magazine and shortlisted for Wasafiri’s New Writing Prize in London. Viets received her B.A. from Oberlin College in political science and an MFA from Columbia University.