Book Review: Tongue Tied

 Image: The cover of the book is a light sky blue. Across the top in two lines taking up almost half of the cover is the title "Tongue-Tied" in a tangled pink bubble like script font. Below that is a white dialogue bubble with the point to the left of the upper title. Inside in black letters with cracks resembling a cracked window is "Breaking the language barrier to animal liberation." In the bottom right corner is a white thought bubble with the smaller bubbles decreasing towards the lower corner. Inside is the author's name in small pink print.

Going into Hạnh Nguyên's "Tongue-Tied: Breaking the Language Barrier to Animal Liberation," I expected a book that would lean to the academic side of things. While it does have academic aspects, it is clear that Nguyên intended to write this book for a wide variety of audiences- including those who may be new to the idea of animal liberation. While I am pretty far away from my pre-vegan days, I do think Nguyên succeeded in this. This is no easy feat. Quite often I will find a book is all introductory or all highly specialized discussion. Yet, Tongue-Tied manages to pack a lot of information for several audiences into a small space. I suppose one could even call it a well-researched manifesto on the importance of language and inclusion of who she calls other-than-human animals. Nguyên's writing style really appealed to me and I found myself breezing through what could easily become a cumbersome topic. This book manages to make very strong, direct, unapologetic statements about these subjects without assuming that the reader has a PhD in animal studies. I am sure that, as a 14 year vegan who has read a lot on these themes, I may grasp it better than someone new to it all. But, I do think a wide variety of people could read and enjoy this. Even before I had finished it, I decided I was going to add it to my repertoire of books that I recommend to those new to the ideas of animal and collective liberation.

Nguyên starts us off with some history about herself and a brief linguistic and philosophical history of human interaction with other animals. Here and throughout the book, she effectively argues the extreme importance of language in the fight for animal liberation- including humans. Humans can and have weaponized language against other animals, allowing us to obscure who they are by labeling them as products, possessions, fashion accessories, test objects, entertainment attractions, and other forms of exploitation and oppression they face. Nguyên also discusses how animality has been used in conjunction with other methods in order to oppress marginalized humans on the basis of disability. gender, race, class, national origin, and other facets. The author herself is a Vietnamese American "third culture kid" who has unique experiences in both USAmerican culture and Vietnamese culture. She utilizes this well to discuss many human-other animal interactions and relationships that aren't often highlighted in texts about animal liberation and linguistics.
 
Nguyên is also adept at discussing how both animal rights or other advocates for animals AND those who don't follow this path hold speciesist views, use speciesist language, and make many mistakes regarding interaction with other-than-human animals. Because I bookmarked about 1/3-1/2 of the pages in this book, it would be impossible to add all of the quotes I admired to this review. This one captures an important point for those who seek to ally themselves with other animals: "Other than human animals are the owners of their experiences; they are the protagonists of their stories... When we stop characterizing other animals as "voiceless," we can properly reposition ourselves as their allies." When we refer to other animals as a homogenous voiceless group, we take away their already existing collective and individual voices. She explains how doing things like describing animals by instinct and reproduction erases their relations with one another. We often describe the same behavior in humans as completely devoid of choice and emotion and other animals- a huge pet peeve of mine when I read books about other animals written by journalists or scientists who obviously have not seen other animals as much more than things. She also makes a very important point about fighting "animal cruelty." In fighting only the most severe forms of cruelty, we still support the idea that the exploitation itself is defensible provided it is "humane," which often just means "slightly less horrible." Non-advocates and welfarists are known for doing this, but many other more radical animal advocates contribute to this idea as well.

The author explains very well her reasoning for using language about other animals that emphasizes their individual personhood. While she is direct and firm, she does not beat the reader over the head with things. The book inspires critical thinking, questioning, and experimentation. She is also very aware of the shortcomings of humans interpreting for or writing about other animals, even when we do try to implement these things:

"Each person's story is known to them, if no one else. It is a rather unsettling realization: that human perception and understanding are not required for an other than human person to exist and persist or for their subjective experience to be extraordinary - that without any need to be seen and known by a human or validated by human constructs of reality, other than human animals continue to live with meaning and purpose."

Nguyên wraps the book up with an excellent summary of her thoughts and arguments. This book was fairly short, but has given me an immense amount to think about regarding my interactions with and how I think about other animals. There is so much more than is in this review and it was very difficult to choose which quotes to select or what to focus on because the entire book is full of fantastic, thought provoking, and important information.

This summary is followed by an unexpected set of portraits of other-than-human animals she has encountered throughout her life. It took me off guard as I looked through the images of everyone from animals at sanctuaries to her personal companions. I found myself in tears, practically sobbing by the end of the images when we meet a rat (or possibly a mouse) without a name who has sacrificed so much and that the author expresses desire to have known. I am currently providing end-of-life care to a rat with an advanced pituitary tumor while I was reading this book, have lost one other rat and dog of about 15 years within the past year, and have been exposed to massive amounts of loss, cruelty, and exploitation of other animals. Those undoubtedly played a part in my emotional response. At the same time, I found this to be an extremely creative way of approaching a conclusion. It really brought everything full circle- the individual personhood of other animals, their inherent existence for their own reasons, the important places they hold in our lives, the effects they have on every aspect of humanity, and how very serious and urgent an issue this is. It can be quite overwhelming when we try to wrap our heads around numbers in the trillions of animals killed per year for food alone. But, when we look at each individual, our human minds can grasp who this is happening to and this creates an understanding that is critical.  

I cannot recommend this book enough. It is fairly accessible, informative, passionate, well written, rational without being cold, emotional without being hyperbolic, and most importantly, it brings new ideas to the conversation.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Note: I made the mistake of writing this review first in blogger instead of a word processor. As a result, while editing, I lost a large chunk of my review and blogger autosaved the draft. I tried to rewrite it, but it's still shorter and pieces are still missing. I will update this review if I can remember them.