second language can provide us with a new self? On the evidence of Katherine Russell Rich's Dreaming in Hindi (Mariner; $14.95), immersion in another language results in moments of seeming "possession" by it. While less ecstatic, Deborah Fallows's Dreaming in Chinese (Walker; $22) is also a story about how learning a language permitted her to inhabit more thoroughly an alien culture. You could say that sympathy and possession are weak and strong forms of the same outcome--a change of mind following mimeticism.from Ange Mlinko: The Nation: Languaging
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