A collection of short literary essays about languages and literary journey, Akzentfrei - Without an Accent, in my own translation - by Berlin-based Japanese author Yoko Tawada is an important reference for books written in German by non-German born authors.
Particularly the essay that gives the name of the collection, Akzentfrei. In your everyday life conversations as a non-German, your ´accent´ is often a passive-aggressive reaction against the difference. Job applications can be rejected and people´s ´linguistic allegiance´ is automatically denied based on the accent. Ironically, Germany itself has a high variations of accents that may make dialects spoken in different part of the country hard to understand by a native speaker him-/herself. Articulately, Tawada pledges the cause of accents as a very unique personal feature that enriches the community where spoken while empowers the speaker.
Tawada´s essays are rich in various linguistic references, particularly from Japanese. I love those kinds of analogies and genealogies and therefore the collection was a pleasure and a revelation. I don´t remember to have been reading a similar take on language by non-German authors but nevertheless I wish that there are more such collections and bold takes on language. After all, the way in which we speak and accept other people´s speaking measures the degree of tolerance within a society.
An amalgame of linguistic, anthropological, cultural and historical references, Akzentfrei is both a social and cultural testimony, from a German realm still looking for its own measure of tolerance.
Rating: 4 stars
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