The Fall of Language in the Age of English by Minae Mizumura. Translated by Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters Carpenter. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. [University of Iowa Libraries: PL856.I98 N5613 2015]
Note from co-curator Nataša Ďurovičová:
Originally titled The Fall of Japanese Language in the Age of English (my underscore), this monograph by the entirely cosmopolitan, Yale-trained Japanese novelist Minae Mizumura describes her first weeks in Iowa City as a testing ground for the overwhelming dominance of English in the international literary context. This then becomes a starting point for her vigorous defense for the preservation of Japanese literary traditions and institutions. Mizumura’s novelistic voice elevates her crushing personal experience to one non-Anglophone writers everywhere understand only too well—and one American students, who are always assigned this chapter in our classes, often find illuminating too.
Read an excerpt from this chapter, “Under the Blue Sky of Iowa.”