Join us for a conversation with Jennifer Feeley on her translation of Tongueless by Lau Yee-Wa, a psychological thriller steeped in the ongoing sociolinguistic tensions that are currently happening in Hong Kong. The conversation will be followed by a group discussion with the Contemporary Translated Works Book Group, co-presented by Mechanics’ Institute(opens in a new tab) and Center for the Art of Translation, to delve deeper into the book.
How to Participate
Registration(opens in a new tab) is required for this event. Use the promo code “CAT” for free tickets.
Get a copy of Tongueless(opens in a new tab) (we suggest purchasing the book directly from Feminist Press via their website(opens in a new tab)) and read it in advance of the meeting. On Wednesday, December 18, we will meet at noon (PT) to discuss this book with a group of people interested in reading contemporary translated works. This is online book group that meets via Zoom. For those of you residing in Pacific Time, we welcome you to bring your lunch to this noontime event. For those of you joining us from other time zones, thank you for making this book group an (inter)national gathering!
For these informal discussions, we will begin with a sharing of our favorite “golden lines” from Tongueless. While this is optional, we’d love to hear from you! We will then transition into an informal discussion that integrates questions around themes, narrators/characters, and more. Together, we will delve deeper into Tongueless in this informal hybrid setting.
About Tongueless
[Trigger Warning: This book discusses suicide.]
Tongueless follows two rival teachers at a secondary school in Hong Kong who are instructed to switch from teaching in Cantonese to Mandarin—or lose their jobs. Apolitical and focusing on surviving and thriving in their professional environment, Wai and Ling each approach the challenge differently. Wai, awkward and unpopular, becomes obsessed with Mandarin learning; Ling, knowing how to please her superiors and colleagues, thinks she can tactfully dodge the Mandarin challenge by deploying her social savviness. Wai eventually crumples under the pressure and dies by suicide, leaving her colleague Ling to face seismic political and cultural change alone as she considers how far she will go to survive such a ruthlessly competitive work environment.
Sharp, darkly humorous, and politically pointed, Tongueless presciently engages with important issues facing Hong Kong today during which so much of the city’s uniqueness—especially its language—is at risk of being erased.
About this Book Group
Launched in March 2024, the Contemporary Translated Works Book Group explores languages, cultures, and the art of translation through contemporary literature.
Click here(opens in a new tab) to watch our introductory discussion with translator Jeremy Tiang for Beijing Sprawl, our Spring/Summer 2024 selection.
Click here(opens in a new tab) to watch our introductory discussion with translator Julia Sanches for Migratory Birds(opens in a new tab), our Fall 2024 selection.
Jennifer Feeley is the translator of Not Written Words: Selected Poetry of Xi Xi, Carnival of Animals: Xi Xi’s Animal Poems, the White Fox series by Chen Jiatong, Wong Yi’s chamber opera Women Like Us, and Mourning a Breast by Xi Xi. She holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures from Yale University and is the recipient of the 2017 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize and a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship.