French Lessons

This collection, the author’s first, takes slippages in language as a starting point to explore gaps within the self, between the self and the world of others and everyday objects, as well as faultlines within the body politic. The encounter with a foreign tongue becomes an occasion for both loss of self and opening into otherness; the attempt to gain a hold on things by writing them down proves ominously fleeting. At turns playful and sober, French Lessons does not bring us Paris cityscapes or villages in Provence, but rather meditates on the lingering power of the foreign to challenge and transform the familiar.