Fifteen outstanding writers answered editor Wendy Lesser's call for original essays on the subject of language--the
one they grew up with, and the English in which they write.
Despite American assumptions about polite Chinese discourse, Amy Tan believes that there was nothing discreet about
the Chinese language with which she grew up. Leonard Michaels spoke only Yiddish until he was five, and still found
its traces in his English language writing. Belgian-born Luc Sante loved his French Tintin and his Sartre, but
only in English could he find "words of one syllable" that evoke American bars and bus stops. And although Louis
Begley writes novels in English and addresses family members in Polish, he still speaks French with his wife--the
language of their courtship.
As intimate as one's dreams, as private as a secret identity, these essays examine and reveal the writers' pride,
pain, and pleasure in learning a new tongue, revisiting an old one, and reconciling the joys and frustrations of
each.