Earthsong Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NATIVE TONGUE TRILOGY

  “Less well known than The Handmaid’s Tale but just as apocalyptic in [its] vision, … Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue … records female tribulation in a world where … women have no public rights at all. Elgin’s heroines do, however, have one set of weapons—words of their own.” —Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, New York Times Book Review

  “I urge [Native Tongue] upon you…. Elgin has carried current [views] on women to their ‘logical’ conclusion…. She takes up everything from religion to sex. Above all, she understands that until women find the words and syntax for what they need to say, they will never say it, nor will the world hear it…. There isn’t a phony or romantic moment here, and the story is absolutely compelling.” —Carolyn Heilbrun, Women’s Review of Books

  “Native Tongue brings to life not only the possibility of a women’s language, but also the rationale for one…. [It is] a language that can bring to life concepts men have never needed, have never dreamed of—and thus change the world.” —Village Voice Literary Supplement

  “This angry feminist text is also an exemplary experiment in speculative fiction, deftly and implacably pursuing both a scientific hypothesis and an ideological hypothesis through all their social, moral, and emotional implications.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, author of The Left Hand of Darkness

  “Published in 1984, Native Tongue got it right. Despite many gains, the status of women today remains precarious as ever. Female friendships are as vital and sustaining as water and air. And in the power and precision of language, one can begin to change the world.” —Maggie Shen King, author of An Excess Male

  “Elgin’s novel will inspire those who believe that women’s words can change the world. Read it!” —Marleen S. Barr, editor of Future Females, the Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism

  THE NATIVE TONGUE TRILOGY

  BY SUZETTE HADEN ELGIN

  NATIVE TONGUE

  THE JUDAS ROSE

  EARTHSONG

  NATIVE TONGUE III

  EARTHSONG

  SUZETTE HADEN ELGIN

  FOREWORD BY KAREN LORD

  AFTERWORD BY SUSAN M. SQUIER AND JULIE VEDDER

  Published in 2019 by the Feminist Press

  at the City University of New York

  The Graduate Center

  365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

  New York, NY 10016

  feministpress.org

  Second edition

  First Feminist Press edition 2002

  Copyright © 1994 by Suzette Haden Elgin

  Foreword copyright © 2019 by Karen Lord

  Afterword copyright © 2002 by Susan M. Squier and Julie Vedder

  Originally published in 1994 by DAW Books, Inc., New York

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used, stored in an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission of the Feminist Press at the City University of New York except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First printing July 2019

  Cover design by Suki Boynton

  Text design by Drew Stevens

  Corn wreath logo by Suzette Haden Elgin

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Elgin, Suzette Haden, author.

  Title: Earthsong / Suzette Haden Elgin.

  Description: Second edition. | New York, NY : the Feminist Press, 2019. | Series: The native tongue trilogy ; 3

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019021245 (print) | LCCN 2019021816 (ebook) | ISBN 9781936932672 (E-book) | ISBN 9781936932665 (pbk.)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women linguists—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3555.L42 (ebook) | LCC PS3555.L42 E37 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021245

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Praise The Native Tongue Trilogy

  Title page

  Copyright

  Contents

  Foreword by Karen Lord: Evolutionary Song

  Earthsong

  Foreword

  Part One: What the First Trancer Said

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Two: What the Second Trancer Said

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  The Trancer is Tired: What’s on the Soaps?

  Chapter Eight

  Part Three: What the Third Trancer Said

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  The Trancer is Tired: What’s on the Soaps?

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Appendix: Selections from the Teaching Materials of the Meandering Water Tribe

  Afterword by Susan M. Squier and Julie Vedder: The Meandering Feminist Revolution of Earthsong

  About the Author

  More Classic Works from the Feminist Press

  Also Available from the Feminist Press

  About the Feminist Press

  FOREWORD: EVOLUTIONARY SONG

  When Suzette Haden Elgin created the language Láadan for her trilogy of novels Native Tongue (1984), The Judas Rose (1987), and Earthsong (1994), she had an agenda in mind. The complexity, depth, and thoroughness of her linguistic invention were intrinsic to the books, but went far beyond the requirements of plot because Láadan was intended for use in the real world. Elgin’s declared aim was to test four hypotheses:

  (1) that the weak form of the linguistic relativity hypothesis is true [that is, that human languages structure human perceptions in significant ways]; (2) that Goedel’s Theorem applies to language, so that there are changes you could not introduce into a language without destroying it and languages you could not introduce into a culture without destroying it; (3) that change in language brings about social change, rather than the contrary; and (4) that if women were offered a women’s language one of two things would happen—they would welcome and nurture it, or it would at minimum motivate them to replace it with a better women’s language of their own construction.1

  Elgin notes that her experiment is based on a theory that “women are distressed because existing human languages are inadequate to express their perceptions.” A women’s language, crafted purposefully to fill that lack, should alleviate that distress. A language that could effect that level of change in individuals, and in a society, should spread, or inspire imitators and improvements at the very least.

  To Elgin’s credit, Láadan has survived and is still considered noteworthy by writers today. In a 2012 article for The New Yorker, Joshua Foer gives an example of Láadan as a woman’s language:

  Many conlanging projects begin with a simple premise that violates the inherited conventions of linguistics in some new way…. Láadan, a feminist language developed in the early nineteen-eighties, includes words like radíidin, defined as a “non-holiday, a time allegedly a holiday but actually so much a burden because of work and preparations that it is a dreaded occasion; especially when there are too many guests and none of them help.”2

  And, in a 2019 article for Literary Hub, Rebecca Romney comments triumphantly on that same term, radíidin, in the subtitle of her essay: “There’s even a word for emotional labor!”3 Emotional labor is our modern, two-word English phrase for the unsung and unseen effort involved in maintaining the image of the consummate hostess and homemaker, an effort that is dismissed by patriarchal society as part of “women’s work” if it is considered at all.<
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  Unfortunately, noteworthy is not the same as widespread. Elgin admitted that the ability to test the first three hypotheses depended on the success of the fourth hypothesis. Only if enough speakers took up the language would there be sufficient, non-anecdotal data on its effects on society. However, she imposed a limit of ten years—from the 1984 publication date of Native Tongue to the 1994 publication of Earthsong—and by 1999 she was referring to the experiment as a failure.

  But were ten years and one trilogy really enough? Both Elgin and Foer warn that constructed languages, once released into the real world, go beyond the control of their creators in unexpected and sometimes unwanted ways. Klingon (from Star Trek) and Elvish (from The Lord of the Rings trilogy) have had more success, but that success was won over several decades with greater exposure via books, television, movies, and enthusiastically precise cosplay. Furthermore, though we may not have radíidin, in our present-day vocabulary, we do have emotional labor—so perhaps, given time, patriarchal English could be sufficiently modified to present the feminist worldview without taking up an entirely new lexicon.

  Elgin would have drafted Earthsong well before the 1994 deadline for her experiment, but it reads as if she was already anticipating failure, moving on, and perhaps hinting at another hypothesis for the final novel of her trilogy. On Elgin’s future Earth, Láadan has done its work, but more work remains to be done. The importance of communication and language recedes into the background, and a new problem is highlighted, but this one has no time limit on the solution. The novel, in both story and structure, is an exploration of the power of small adjustments over a long period of time. Gradual change over generations is the key—slow and meandering, but as inevitable as waters run to the sea. It is an epic without heroes, or rather, with so many collective heroines that the transforming force becomes radically multiplied and virtually unstoppable. There is no ten-year plan with this revolution via evolution.

  In Earthsong, Elgin shifts her focus from language to our culture of violence. Science fiction is filled with stories about intelligent alien life that is either unwilling or afraid to make contact with Earth until its denizens evolve into truly civilized beings. Our species’ habit of war has been portrayed as a plague to be quarantined, or an unfortunate phase that this unruly, adolescent humanity must pass through unassisted on a journey of self-determination and self-control.

  Earthsong’s central premise is that by ending hunger we will also end violence. Evidence already exists that what we ingest can affect how we behave. Early exposure to lead—inhaled or consumed—can permanently damage the developing nervous system and can cause behavioral problems. However, Elgin offers no explanation for the link. She merely presents the task, framing it as a communication during a “vision quest” from deceased great-grandmother to living great-granddaughter, and sets the characters on a journey to find the answer.

  Readers don’t need an explanation. They can suspend disbelief and easily accept that the command of an ancestor, shaped not only by a lifetime of experience but also by a new and near-omniscient perspective on human history, will seem illogical to the living. Adults do not tell a child exactly what to do, but tell them whatever is necessary to get them to do it regardless. Ancestors speak the truth in words their offspring can understand, and leave them to learn in time all the nuances and depths contained in that truth.

  Beyond the story, hunger also makes sense as a symbol or metaphor. We humans have many more hungers than mere food, and the world is wounded by our appetites. If we could solve the problem of our runaway consumption, it might not lead immediately to peace, but it could certainly help us to avoid our own destruction. If we are children, we are babies who have to be weaned and trained not to soil our own nest. The metaphor expands in the choices Elgin’s characters make. The initial tests to replace food with alternative nutrition are solitary, isolated, and passive. The process that is eventually implemented is social, cooperative, and active, thereby sating several other human hungers, such as the desires for companionship, achievement, and creativity.

  The solution in Earthsong is not only to end hunger but also to rid humanity of the fear of hunger. That fear allows others to have power over us, to construct and manipulate systems that deliver life necessities. Examples of invented scarcity in the real world include food deserts in impoverished neighborhoods, high food-import bills in small island states, and severed supply lines in besieged and blockaded territories. Removing that fear instantly shifts the balance of power, destabilizing economies and established systems of control, and it is fascinating to see how this plays out in Elgin’s novel. A children’s song at the end of the story reveals how insidious that fear of hunger can be, and how we might train ourselves out of it. The lyrics tell children (and adults) being weaned from “mouthfood” to hold a pebble in their mouths to calm hunger pangs. This is not true hunger, but a combination of psychological yearning and physiological reaction that will disappear when the adjustment, or evolution, is complete.

  But our fears, like our hungers, are many and varied. The real world and the causes of our urge toward violence are far, far more complicated, and the changes required of us, individually and collectively, can feel too massive to even attempt a start. Elgin reminds us, both then and now, of how a feminist r/evolution can be achieved with small steps and by indirect means. Earthsong contains a new paradigm of change, where violence is not employed to destroy violence, nor power to eliminate power. This approach, rarely celebrated in the genre of science fiction, provides a necessary counter to the patriarchal myth that elevates singular heroes, utter conquest, and the swift construction of an unassailable Utopia upon a shining hill.

  The end of hunger. Equality for all. World peace. Phrases that sound like a beauty pageant wish list, with goals that can only be reached in a vision or a dream … or in the best of imaginative science fiction. Speak words crafted to help us better understand ourselves and each other. Keep the communal joys of eating, but switch to a mode of consumption that makes instead of takes. Wait for no hero; do what you can with the ordinary, the many. Or in other words, beyond symbol and metaphor, gradually make this world into a place where everyone has a voice, a community, and a purpose.

  In hard times, readers hunger for hopeful fiction, and Earthsong provides all that and more.

  Karen Lord

  April 2019

  Notes

  1. Suzette Haden Elgin, “Láadan, the Constructed Language in Native Tongue,” Science Fiction Writers of America, 1999, http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Laadan.html.

  2. Joshua Foer, “Utopian for Beginners: An Amateur Linguist Loses Control of the Language He Invented,” The New Yorker, December 24 & 31, 2012, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/ utopian-for-beginners.

  3. Rebecca Romney, “This Science Fiction Novelist Created a Feminist Language from Scratch,” Literary Hub, January 15, 2019, https://lithub.com/this-science-fiction-novelist-created-a-feminist-language-from-scratch/.

  EARTHSONG

  FOREWORD

  My name is Nazareth Joanna Chornyak; I was a woman of the linguist Lines. I died of a broken heart in the summer of 2289, at Chornyak Barren House, on that day when all the Aliens suddenly returned to their homeworlds; I was one hundred and twenty-one years old at the time. One minute the Aliens were there—in the conference halls, in the government facilities, in the Interfaces of the thirteen linguist Households—as they had been for two hundred years and more. The next minute, hoverlings were just above the lawns and parks and buildings and the Aliens were hurrying out to them, carrying with them only their portable atmospheres, leaving everything else behind, boarding the hoverlings and disappearing toward the motherships. Without one word of explanation to the linguists or to anyone else, they were simply gone. And so was I.

  It was bad timing on my part. If I had known the Aliens were going to leave, I would have died the day before, or the day after. I would never deliberately have done anything so gaudy as
seeming to be a part of their exodus. Many people assumed that the shock of seeing the two Aliens-in-Residence abandoning the Chornyak Interface killed me; they were wrong. I was out in the gardens, gathering an armful of roses; I didn’t even see the AIRYs leaving. It was nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence, you perceive.

  When I died, I was expecting a number of different things. Or perhaps not exactly expecting them … “expecting” isn’t the right word. I mean that I knew there were a number of possibilities, and that I was expecting some member of the set proposed by my own culture.

  There’s the one where you die and it’s like a guillotine of darkness … the whistle through the air, the instant of agony, and then nothing at all. Clearly, if that’s accurate we’ll never know it. There’s the one where you’re met by choirs of angels, the feathery kind with harps, and led off to a heaven of white and pink and gold where the blessed spend eternity praising God. There’s the one where you wake up again as a cockroach or a cow or, if you’ve been good enough, as some new and different human being. There’s the one where you’re caught up into a sort of mist and you waft about as one infinitesimal part of an infinite but disembodied Oversoul. There’s the one where, if you’re a man, beautiful maidens feed you fruit and honey and goodies while others like them sing and dance for you … what that one is like if you’re a woman, I have no idea. Certainly no adult woman wants young boys to feed and entertain her. There’s the one that is the guillotine of darkness in reverse—a sort of guillotine of light. There’s the horrible one that has hell in it, with devils tormenting you in a lake of fire … and the equally horrible one where the blessed lean over heaven’s parapets and watch the goings-on in the lake of fire with smug satisfaction. I was expecting one of those, or some variation on one of those.

  I was not expecting what I actually got. The idea that you find yourself first at a sort of waystation where you’re offered a triple choice—go on, go back, or stay and help—was new to me. You can go on, something said, to What Is Ahead … but you can’t know what that is. Only that it’s a great improvement on where you’ve been. You can go back to where you’ve been, and do it all over again; you can make better choices than the ones you made the previous time, and perhaps be more satisfied with the results. Or you can make the third choice: stay right here, and help, when you are called upon for help.