Read Into It! is a monthly book club where we explore the ideas, systems, and stories that shape our world. From niche histories and personal memoirs to cultural commentary and investigative journalism, each selection invites us to question our assumptions and explore new perspectives.
Join us for discussion on the 4th Thursday of each month!
In October, we are reading How to Kill a Language by Sophia Smith Galer.
"Around the world, an unprecedented shift is drawing speakers toward national and global lingua francas. With half of our 7,000 languages due to disappear this century, linguicide is one of the most pressing cultural emergencies of our age.
In How to Kill a Language, journalist Sophia Smith Galer travels across continents and generations to chart this phenomenon. In Ecuador, she sees firsthand how shame deters parents from passing Kichwa onto their children. In Oman, she learns about languages with roots older than Arabic but never officially recognized. And in Italy, she searches for her Nonna's dialët, which is vanishing from diaspora communities and Italy itself.
But languages can also be reclaimed: We meet the Karuk tribe of California, pioneering a grassroots language immersion program, and the storytellers challenging the criminalization of Kurdish. And in her discussion of Hebrew, Smith Galer reckons with the unintended consequences of raising a language seemingly from the grave.
Part investigation, part travelogue from a disappearing world, How to Kill a Language exposes the true costs of this mass extinction event. Brought to life by vivid storytelling and Smith Galer's own experience with language loss, it's a fierce rallying cry for a multilingual future."
A limited number of copies of the book selection are available at the circulation desk downstairs.
