Writing the Stepmother Tongue:
A Symposium on Translingual Literature
Amherst College, MA (Alumni House)
October 9, 2015
Translingual literature is the phenomenon of authors who, like Samuel Beckett, André Brink, and
Vladimir Nabokov, write in more than one language or who, like Chinua Achebe, Joseph Conrad,
and Ha Jin, write exclusively in a language other than their primary one. In an increasingly mobile
world, migration, colonialism, and literary willfulness have vastly increased this phenomenon. The
rich roster of contemporary translingual novelists includes André Aciman, Yelena Akhtiorskaya,
Rabih Alameddine, Daniel Alarcón, Julia Alvarez, Louis Begley, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz,
Ariel Dorfman, Cristina García, Olga Grushin, Ursula Hegi, Mohsin Hamid, Aleksandar Hemon,
Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Ha Jin, Francesca Marciano, Hisham Matar, Dinaw Mengestu, Bharati
Mukherjee, Gary Shteyngart, Anya Ulinich, and Lara Vapnyar – to mention only those who write in
English. And within the past two decades a burgeoning interdisciplinary body of scholarship has
begun to take account of translingual texts to examine the ways in which language-switching makes
a difference to the creation of noteworthy literature.
Faculty, graduate students, and all interested, please join us for talks, readings, and discussions. The
symposium will open at 10:30 AM; no registration required.
Keynote Speaker: Doris Sommer, Harvard University (11 AM), followed by the Panel with Translingual Writers
(Ilan Stavans, Maxim Shrayer, Luc Sante, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Mong Lan, Alta Ifland).
The afternoon sessions will be geared to specialized audiences/scholars of translingual literature.
Please contact Natasha Lvovich with questions and inquiries: [email protected]