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Dreaming in Hindi |  | Author: Katherine Russell Rich
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $15.64
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Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 52969
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0618155457
Dewey Decimal Number: 954.0531092
EAN: 9780618155453
ASIN: 0618155457
Publication Date: July 7, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780618155453 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
Having miraculously survived a serious illness and now at an impasse in her career as a magazine editor, Rich spontaneously accepted a free-lance writing assignment to go to India, where she found herself thunderstruck by the place and the language. Before she knew it she was on her way to Udaipur, a city in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, in order to learn Hindi.
In this inspirational memoir, Rich documents her experiences in India ranging from the bizarre to the frightening to the unexpectedly exhilarating using Hindi as the lens through which she is given a new perspective not only on India, but on the radical way the country and the language itself were changing her. Fascinated by the process, she went on to interview linguistics experts around the world, reporting back from the frontlines of the science wars on what happens in the brain when we learn a new language. Seamlessly combining Rich's courageous (and often hilarious) personal journey with wideranging reporting, Dreaming in Hindi offers an eye-opening account of what learning a new language can teach us about distant worlds and, ultimately, ourselves.
Personal Photos from Katherine Russell Rich, Author of Dreaming in Hindi
(Click on each image below to see a larger view)
 |  |  | | Katherine Russell Rich in the Ancient Fort City of Chittogarh | Rajasthani Ektara Player | Katherine Russell Rich in Sari and Bindi |
Product Description
Having miraculously survived a serious illness and now at an impasse in her career as a magazine editor, Rich spontaneously accepted a free-lance writing assignment to go to India, where she found herself thunderstruck by the place and the language. Before she knew it she was on her way to Udaipur, a city in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, in order to learn Hindi.
In this inspirational memoir, Rich documents her experiences in India ranging from the bizarre to the frightening to the unexpectedly exhilarating using Hindi as the lens through which she is given a new perspective not only on India, but on the radical way the country and the language itself were changing her. Fascinated by the process, she went on to interview linguistics experts around the world, reporting back from the frontlines of the science wars on what happens in the brain when we learn a new language. Seamlessly combining Rich s courageous (and often hilarious) personal journey with wideranging reporting, Dreaming in Hindi offers an eye-opening account of what learning a new language can teach us about distant worlds and, ultimately, ourselves.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 51
 Yes, India, it is just all about me! February 11, 2010
Voracious Reader
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
When will writers of memoirs learn that their boring self-absorbed selves are not worth writing about - but that the countries they visit and the people they meet are. Good example, Paul Theroux at his best, bad example, Paul Theroux at his worst. This author (and her publisher) were obviously trying to cash in on the Eat Pray Love phenomenon.
 It depends... November 30, 2009
Meli RajMarie
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I read the reviews on this book before reading and I can confirm that many are accurate especially those concerning the stylistics. There were many times that I simply could not follow what she had written no matter how many times I reread the passage. And while I can appreciate poetic license in an attempt to simulate the chaotic, confusing and overwhelming experience of second language acquisition, if this is what she was trying to convey, it made reading the book very difficult at times.
The topic on the other hand was of great interest to me; I have degrees in second language acquisition, linguistic and speak several languages including some Hindi. I have been to India many times as well. Anyone with a similar interests would find enough in the book to make it a worthwhile read.
Lastly, I can't help but conclude that this book's title is a misnomer and should be something like "Trudging through Hindi: Surviving a Year in Another Language" or something to that effect. I have learned to speak several languages fluently while living abroad and I can truthfully say that I have come alive in another language. It feels like you've gain another soul and added another dimension to yourself. I did NOT get this feeling from her experience, and although she is telling her story, I felt like she was hardly involved in it as if even her personal life is some research topic. In addition, many of the author's comments about India and it's customs were said from an ignorant and arrogant American's point of view.
 Why all the publicity for this book? November 26, 2009
Karen Cawrse (Northborough, MA USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I received this book as a gift when I was hospitalized this summer. It was one of People Magazine's picks for new non-fiction and an Oprah's book club pick. I found the book a huge disappointment. Had the recommenders actually read it?? I was most interested in getting to know the author through her experiences in a Hindi language immersion program in India. I was least interested in the latest linguistic/scientific studies on how we process language. I found the book to be disjointed and boring, almost a textbook for linguistic students--with the exception of some interesting cultural information about modern-day India.
 Gorgeous, poetic language--stunning November 23, 2009
Target lover (Evanston, Il USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have been a fan of Katherine Russell Rich's for years. I came upon her writing when I read her amazing memoir THE RED DEVIL. And then I read it again. And again. And again. Each time I read that book I found so much new (to me) in it that it is almost as if I have never read it before. So I eagerly awaited her next book and have now read Dreaming In Hindi 2 times. And I will read it again because like the Red Devil more and more makes itself known, as if revealed in layers, with each reading. This book put me into a gaze, a trance as I rambled along beside Rich throughout her year in India. She was drunk on the culture, in a dreamlike state, and so was I as I turned the pages of this exquisite memoir. Never did I forget that she was surviving a stage 4 breast cancer and living for herself a huge vital life as I was reading even though this fact was only brought up from time to time and the reader not hit over the head with it. Rich weaves her tale gracefully, with literary writing that is surpassed by no one writing today and she makes sentences that sound like no one else. I learned so much about how the brain processes language and learns a new language as well and I loved how she mixes in the scientific with her inner experience of language and change. This book, I cannot shake off, nor do I want to, it has left me in that trance I mentioned before, like a sari scarf drifting across my face.
A hybrid gem November 20, 2009
Bummerologist (Red Hook, NY USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
DREAMING IN HINDI is a deft, erudite, and beautifully written hybrid of travel memoir and popular science. Its hybridness--or hybridity--seems to make a lot of readers uncomfortable, possibly those who were hoping to find an all-Indian EAT, PRAY, LOVE. But Kathy Rich isn't interested in peddling uplift, unless it's the uplift we feel when we see a really good writer penetrating a closed world, not just a geographical or cultural world, but a cognitive one. Reading DREAMING won't make you a Hindi speaker, but it will make you experience the stutter-step of learning a new language: the long, despairing impasses and the sudden, blinding insights. It will also make you understand the neurophysiological reasons for both. Reading it is like looking at one of those laminated acetate medical charts on whose succeeding levels one can see skin, organs, and skeleton: The effect is thrilling.
Rich's portraits of her instructors, fellow students, hosts, and friends are often funny, occasionally biting, but always humane. Even the characters who are dodgy or demented are engaging.
And just as DREAMING captures the experience of learning a new language, it also renders the strangeness, intoxication, loneliness, fear, and disgust of being immersed in a new culture. I can't think of any immigrant or expat--including immigrants to the U.S.-- who hasn't at one point felt revulsion for his new country and its natives. Such feelings are part of any genuine relationship, and the vigor with which Katherine Russell Rich evokes them suggests that her relationship with India was the real thing. This book certainly is.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 51
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