Language

How does the language you use affect your writing?

We asked writers to talk about how being multilingual affects their writing. Many immigrants and refugees are forced to give up their native language, while others are encouraged to learn many more languages. Their experiences shape how they view language, and even which language they prefer to speak, write, or think in.

“Language is connected to POWER, the ability to speak, the ability to narrate, the ability to sort of CONTROL the story, right? And if you control the story, you control the world.”

“My writing emerges from that BORDERLAND between MANY languages.”

“It’s also a source of SHAME because I feel that I’m BETRAYING my mother tongue by writing in English.”

"I think in English, you have these wonderful historical and CULTURAL ACCENTS that let you say any number of things in any number of registers, which is a great and FLEXIBLE thing. And Spanish likes to take its time."

"What language does is it gives SHAPE to EMOTIONS."

Dipika Mukherjee

"One of the things that I enjoy reading in NOVELS from around the WORLD is sometimes having these particular phrases that are NOT TRANSLATABLE."

"I want ALL the words because the words are TOOLS."

"Languages, they are INSTRUMENTS. I've been learning instruments all my life."

"I love to be able to express something EXACTLY PERFECTLY in whatever language it is."

Viet Thanh Nguyen

"So making the language visible was also my way of STAKING MY CLAIM to this language, to English, and ULTIMATELY, to this country."

Edwidge Danticat

"I always feel like BEHIND the English that I am speaking or writing is a VEIL of my CREOLE, or the French that I learned in school."

Luis Alberto Urrea

"I was raised TWICE at the same time."

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