Native Tongue trilogy

The Native Tongue trilogy is a series of novels by Suzette Haden Elgin.

• Native Tongue (1984)
• The Judas Rose (Native Tongue II) (1987)
• Earthsong (Native Tongue III) (1993)

Native Tongue and The Judas Rose are Elgin's most directly feminist science fiction novels. Native Tongue takes place in a future United States in which women have been deprived of all social and political rights, and reduced again to the legal status of minors under the control of their husbands and male relations (interestingly, on the basis of a late-twentieth century scientific paper that "proved" that women were somehow inferior to men). Society has also formed a new class, that of linguists who are crucial to dealings with alien civilizations. (Elgin is herself a linguist, so an interest in language runs through many of her works.) Only in the linguist class are women somewhat free to engage in professional endeavor (linguistics). The linguist women develop their own language, laadan, to express women's perceptions and emotions. By spreading this language throughout human civilization they hope to transform society.

Earthsong completely abandons the themes of the earlier novels and instead posits that the solution to humankind's greatest problem, hunger, is and has always been within reach of all people. Using the same device of secretly training people in new knowledge, the solution to hunger is spread throughout humanity and then revealed to Earth's leaders who (too late) try to stop it.

Discussions, commentary, critique

• Why I have never read Native Tongue III, yonmei, Feminist SF blog, April 25, 2008