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Crossings

""Varied Imagination"" and ""Living between Languages""

Sylvia Molloy Diana Taylor

$190.95

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English
Seagull Books London Ltd
06 May 2025
Series: Enactments
A captivating exploration of identity, language, and memory, weaving together whimsical and profound vignettes that challenge our understanding of home and self in a multicultural world.

In Crossings, Sylvia Molloy embarks on an evocative exploration of the intricate and profound experience of living between languages, cultures, and geographies. A pioneering Argentine writer, fluent in Spanish, English, and French, Molloy inhabited all three languages, shuttling back, forth, and between, aware that each place and each language bring forth a different self.

The short entries that make up ""Varied Imagination"" and ""Living Between Languages""—the two collections gathered in this volume for the first time—revolve around an interrelated set of questions. What makes ""home""? Does language make or destabilize a sense of home? How does speaking a language or switching between languages perform one's place in the world? These vignettes capture the realization that the most seemingly natural things in life—such as home, language, and identity—depend entirely on performance. Each act, each word communicates something, means something, does something to their specific audience; another audience might react quite differently. Molloy wrote, rewrote, edited, and reworked to find the right mix to express the estar entre or ""between"" that was her life.

In this compelling volume, Molloy's reflections on the fluidity of identity and the transient nature of home resonate deeply, prompting readers to contemplate the profound connections between language, place, memory, and lived experience.
By:  
Edited by:  
Imprint:   Seagull Books London Ltd
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
Weight:   454g
ISBN:   9781803095196
ISBN 10:   1803095199
Series:   Enactments
Pages:   144
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
I. Varied Imagination 1. Family 2. Journey 3. Citations 4. Disruption II. Living Between Languages 1.Afterthought as Foreword 2.Childhood 3.Family Romance 4.Language Lessons 5.Loss 6.J’Ecris Ma Lecture 7.Territory 8.Mix 9.Birthday Gifts 10.Punctum 11.Animal Talk 12.Echolalias 13.Pictures of Home 14.Freedoms 15.Speaking from Different Places 16.Immigrant Bilingualism 17.Bilingual Crossings 18.Name 19.By Any Other Name 20.Bilingual Binges 21.Lapsus 22.Recognition 23.Violence 24.Accent 25.Tongue and Trauma 26.The Father Tongue 27.Limits 28.Escrituras 29.One or the Other But Not Both 30.Titles 31.Mes Apprentissages 32.Savoir Faire 33.El Cielo de Paris 34.Alteration 35.Faux Pas 36.The Writing Lesson 37.Original Text 38.Memory

Sylvia Molloy (1938–2022) was a novelist, essayist, and leading literary critic of Latin American literature. Her critical works include At Face Value: Autobiographical Writing in Spanish America and Hispanisms and Homosexualities. She authored two novels in Spanish and several books of short prose pieces. Molloy was a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She served as president of the Modern Language Association and of the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana. Diana Taylor is university professor of performance studies and Spanish at New York University. She is the author of several books, most recently ¡Presente! The Politics of Presence. She is the founder and former director of the Hemispheric Institute and was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. She is a current member of the Academy of Arts and Science.  

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