Dreaming in Hindi

Suddenly fired from her job in her 40s Rich sublets her NYC apt, and takes a year off to learn Hindi in Udaipur, in Northern India. (Yeah, sure I'm only deeply jealous.)

Rich pads her memories from her immersion into a different culture, language, and history with her interviews and research into language learning - whether we can achieve fluency at an older age, how our brains use different literacy systems, and research into deaf children creating language from ASL creole, etc. I love this kinda stuff.

Turns out, Rich also took her journey in 2001- so while I was in grade 8 math when the serious teachers came in to break the news Rich was in her language class - but that is not the only violent political event that happens. Rich recounts the anti-muslim riots in Gujurat and the anti- Muslim sentiment more generally. This part was harder to read about (also the “bride burning”)

I appreciated the context on Hindi within a enormous country with a ton of other languages in it (122 according to Wikipedia!) So while Hindi and English are two major languages used, English is the language of ambition and Hindi has its own hangups around tradition and purity.

I really enjoyed this, definitely one of the better and more thoughtful examples of the “and then I learn another language” genre