
Native Tongue
Native Tongue, Book 1
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Narrated by:
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Amy Landon
Originally published in 1984, this classic dystopian trilogy is a testament to the power of language and women's collective action.
In 2205, the 19th Amendment has long been repealed and women are only valued for their utility. The Earth's economy depends on an insular group of linguists who "breed" women to be perfect interstellar translators until they are sent to the Barren House to await death. But instead, these women are slowly creating a language of their own to make resistance possible. Ignorant to this brewing revolution, Nazareth, a brilliant linguist, and Michaela, a servant, both seek emancipation in their own ways. But their personal rebellions risk exposing the secret language, and threaten the possibility of freedom for all.
©2019 the Feminist Press at City University of New York (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...




















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Native Tongue -- as good as I remember
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INCREDIBLE
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Listen Closely
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must read for any science fiction reader!!
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In addition to the unbelievable males in this book, the story doesn't focus in on any one character so it you aren't given the chance to form an emotional connection with any of them. You're not rooting for the women because you feel indifferent towards every character.
Overall good concept, but poorly executed.
Interesting concept, poor delivery
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But wow wow the writing is dull. Everything is told through dialogue between characters, there are (pretty much) no action scenes. I guess this is unsurprising as Elgin's most popular book is "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense" and so one could see how she's using this trilogy (all about the power of language), to explore some of her views on dialogue and abusive verbal attacks (and ways to defend yourself against such attacks).
Also, and I know that I'm not the only one who feels this way from reading reviews of this book on other websites but... you meet a ton of men in this book and they are all garbage. 100%. And it just starts to become a little tedious to listen to monologue after monologue from men talking about their yikes opinions about women, and the range of yikes-views are pretty narrow. We know from looking at oppressive systems historically that there are almost always allies within the ranks of the privileged classes that aid social justice movements. There were white people who helped out the underground railroad, there are straight people who protest alongside LGBTQ folks for queer rights, on and on. Not in this world! In Elgin's future 100% of men are here to oppress and humiliate women. Okay, so maybe a story of allyship just isn't the story Elgin wants to tell, that's chill, but in that case I wish we would have spent more time with the *women* of this society. So much of the book is told from men's point of view and it's just... eh. Unpleasant? Boring?
Thought Provoking Concepts - Tedious Writing
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The book has a premise that interests me, but managed to keep me hovering on the edge of deleting it from my library. I resisted that temptation by doing more washing up than usual so I wasn't entirely wasting that listening time.
I did give up on it during the 'afterword'. I was active in the UK Women's Movement when this book was written as well as being a working academic in Science. The lamentable Afterword confuses Science itself with the toxic academic culture and wants women to 'redefine science' (they mean the semantics of the word 'science'). Sisters, please hand in your cellphones and all other damned results of a completely masculine paradigm, or accept your own hypocrisy.
And as for feminists avoiding the SF genre, how terribly girly of you all! Too scary for the social 'scientists', is it?
PS I am a woman.
The reader was human? That was the most amazing thing about this
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