In this Book
- Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain
- Book
- 2007
- Published by: University of Iowa Press
summary
In the thirteen personal essays in Grammar Lessons, Michele Morano connects the rules of grammar to the stories we tell to help us understand our worlds. Living and traveling in Spain during a year of teaching English to university students, she learned to translate and interpret her past and present worlds—to study the surprising moments of communication—as a way to make sense of language and meaning, longing and memory.
Morano focuses first on her year of living in Oviedo, in the early 1990s, a time spent immersing herself in a new culture and language while working through the relationship she had left behind with an emotionally dependent and suicidal man. Next, after subsequent trips to Spain, she explores the ways that travel sparks us to reconsider our personal histories in the context of larger historical legacies. Finally, she turns to the aftereffects of travel, to the constant negotiations involved in retelling and understanding the stories of our lives. Throughout she details one woman’s journey through vocabulary and verb tense toward a greater sense of her place in the world.
Grammar Lessons illustrates the difficulty and delight, humor and humility of living in a new language and of carrying that pivotal experience forward. Michele Morano’s beautifully constructed essays reveal the many grammars and many voices that we collect, and learn from, as we travel.
Morano focuses first on her year of living in Oviedo, in the early 1990s, a time spent immersing herself in a new culture and language while working through the relationship she had left behind with an emotionally dependent and suicidal man. Next, after subsequent trips to Spain, she explores the ways that travel sparks us to reconsider our personal histories in the context of larger historical legacies. Finally, she turns to the aftereffects of travel, to the constant negotiations involved in retelling and understanding the stories of our lives. Throughout she details one woman’s journey through vocabulary and verb tense toward a greater sense of her place in the world.
Grammar Lessons illustrates the difficulty and delight, humor and humility of living in a new language and of carrying that pivotal experience forward. Michele Morano’s beautifully constructed essays reveal the many grammars and many voices that we collect, and learn from, as we travel.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Part One. Oviedo
- The Queimada
- pp. 18-24
- In the Subjunctive Mood
- pp. 25-38
- Having Hunger
- pp. 39-51
- Everyday Lessons
- pp. 52-58
- On Climbing Pe
- pp. 59-70
- Body Language
- pp. 71-78
- Part Two. Madrid, Altamira, Guernica.
- On Dining Alone
- pp. 81-87
- Motion Sickness
- pp. 88-98
- Authenticity and Artifice
- pp. 99-114
- The Impossible Overcome
- pp. 115-130
- Part Three. After Spain
- In Praise of Envy
- pp. 133-141
- Acknowledgements
- p. 157
Additional Information
ISBN
9781587297458
Related ISBN(s)
9781587295300, 9781609382643
DOI
MARC Record
OCLC
297115850
Pages
171
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2007