“You have to write in your own mother tongue. In a part that is a particular favorite of mine she questions what the term “mother tongue” really means when her supervisor tells her she should not write in German but in her mother tongue: Interestingly, while living in Germany, she decides she wants to write in German. The first polar bear is the grandmother polar bear, a former circus star in Russia, who decides to write an autobiography. Memoirs tells the stories of three generations of polar bears.

Therefore, Tawada first wrote this book in her mother tongue of Japanese. However, after some digging, I learned that it was first published in Japanese, then German, then English. It was a bit difficult for me to track down what language Memoirs was originally written in because different sources seem to say different things, and the copy of the book in the picture above only mentions its translation from German to English. She writes in both Japanese and German, at times even translating her own works from Japanese to German and vice versa. Tawada was born and raised in Japan and moved to Germany in her early twenties, where she learned German.

In a lecture he gave at Stanford (which is posted on YouTube), Levy names Tawada as an influence of his, so I decided to read Tawada for the second essay I wrote for my literature class (the first essay was on Levy’s book).

His book A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard is an amazing read. What led me to read Yoko Tawada was an author named Ian Hideo Levy who is American and writes in Japanese and now lives in Tokyo. It’s encouraging to think of the possibility of learning another language myself and trying to write in that language one day. It is often otherwise known as “exophonic” literature, and what both of these terms mean is when an author writes in a language that is not his/her “mother tongue.” It can also mean when an author still writes in his/her “mother tongue” but also in another language, so “exophonic” writing can also be a way of complementing multiple languages.Īs someone who is monolingual in English, I find it courageous and wonderful for someone to write in a language that is not his/her first. I want to start by saying that I’ve had a growing fascination lately with something called “translingual” literature. 😛 Anyways, let’s get started in talking about this wonderful book, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, written by Yoko Tawada. I had an essay due yesterday, and my brain has been a bit fried. Hello fellow bookworms! First off, I apologize for the delay of this book discussion.

Yoko tawada memoirs of a polar bear