Is There Comfort in Language? A Look at the Polyglot Poetics of Julia Alvarez and Zeina Hashem Beck

Abstract

This article studies the translingual poetics of two contemporary women and argues that the texts of the younger, Lebanese poet, Zeina Hashem Beck, are more explicit in their representations of respective processes of domination than those of the older, Dominican-American poet, Julia Alvarez. Both Hashem Beck and Alvarez can be considered Anglophone writers, but neither grew up with English as a first language. Neither fits entirely within Dowling’s frame of settler monolingualism and neoliberal multiculturalism, yet certain elements of these contexts are relevant for the following readings. Employing the concept of comfort, the resulting comparative analysis understands the varying representations of languages other than English through discussions of creative inspiration and forms of delivery. It observes that the contrast with a non-European language enforces the challenges polyglot poetry poses for the current global language and for what Yasemin Yildiz terms the “monolingual paradigm”.