three-part song as inheritance

September 26, 2024 9:43 AM

"Still, she was enjoying the class, and it was probably why she’d dreamed of a Jvichoru song, even if she couldn’t figure out how her brain had produced it." "Maghda's Song" is a short fantasy story by Eleanor Glewwe, published in 2022 in Anathema: Spec from the Margins. Glewwe is a linguist and musician, and notes, "There is also a cat, if you need that in your life." I was born in the US to Indian immigrant parents (now dead) who spoke Kannada, which I only speak a tiny bit of myself, so the linguistic position Maghda's in felt familiar to me -- diasporic alienation both from the familial tongue, and from the dominant language(s) spoken by people in/from the family's home country. And this story made me cry with wish-fulfillment.
posted by brainwane (4 comments total)

Thanks brainwane! That was a very short story for how dusty it got in here.
posted by sixswitch at 11:08 AM on September 26 [1 favorite]

Aw, that was a lovely little story!
posted by tavella at 3:18 PM on September 26 [1 favorite]

Wow that's harmonic.
posted by ovvl at 7:35 PM on September 26 [1 favorite]

That was a lovely story, thank you for sharing it.
posted by Ishbadiddle at 1:38 AM on September 27 [2 favorites]