Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue
'Tawada's strange, exquisite book toys with ideas of language, identity and what it means to own someone else's story or one's own' The New Yorker on Tawada's Memoirs of a Polar Bear
Are you formed by your mother tongue?
How might the world unfold if you stepped outside of its rhythms?
In this playful and daring interrogation of language, the globally acclaimed Yoko Tawada reveals the poetics, politics and potential of existing outside one's mother tongue.
From Senegalese writers discarding colonial-enforced French to the increasing use of loan words in her native Japanese, Tawada deconstructs the ways in which the world shapes and is shaped by languages: their hidden systems of power, their sweeping histories and, ultimately, the people who claim, reject, adapt or romanticise them.
Exophony is an invitation to revel in the possibilities that emerge when we dare to seek beyond the familiar - and a sharp, incisive series of essays in which Tawada's erudite wit and multidimensional curiosity sing.
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Publishing has a diversity problem. There are less 'diverse' books being published which limits the discoverability and reach of those authors.
Representation is important. Read more about why we exist here.
Reviewed by Marina
Read other past book club titles
Wild Seed (Patternist #1)
Fundamentally
Rejection
Perfect Victims
The Midnight Shift
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Son of the Morning
Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue
Taiwan Travelogue
The Right to Sex
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Amplify Book Club
A monthly bookish meet up at Amplify 💚
Join us for a cosy and reflective evening in our reading room! Come ready to chat about our latest read and make new bookish friends.
Book club is held from 6-8pm on the last Thursday of each month, with the book of the month alternating between fiction and non-fiction. As always, we aim to read widely across genres and topics, so there will be a range of options for every reader as the months go on.
What we're reading:
June: The Right To Sex by Amia Srinivasan (A landmark in feminist writing)
July: Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shaung Zi (Winner of the 2026 International Booker Prize)
August: Light and Thread by Han Kang (A small book of reflections by a Nobel Prize Winner)
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Book club is for everyone, equally, to share and contribute their ideas — facilitators are just present to help guide the night and break the ice (and participate!). The fiction book club will be facilitated by Kanika Chopra. Non-fiction will be facilitated by Marina Sano and Nishtha B.
All participants will get 10% off any in-store purchases on book club nights. There will also be nibbles and a welcome drink (non-alcoholic) to get you settled in!
Book club will be held in our reading room at 55 Peel St, West Melbourne. The reading room is accessed via a spiral staircase. If this is an accessibility issue for you, please be in touch after making your booking so we can accommodate your needs.
Our reading room has a limited capacity so tickets are capped to reflect this. If you can no longer make it, please let us know up to a week prior and we will try to facilitate a ticket transfer. Please note tickets are non-refundable but they can be transferred if we have someone on the waitlist who wants your seat.
Book club is a safe space for everyone to have thought-provoking, insightful conversations about books. Please come with an open mind and be open respectful to our hosts and participants. We have safe spaces for you to step aside and take a moment for yourself if/when necessary. Disruptive behaviour will not be tolerated. Amplify Bookstore reserves the right to revoke tickets.
An anti-racist social enterprise bookstore specialising in BIPOC books.
Only about 11% of books published are by BIPOC authors — so unless you specifically seek out books by BIPOC authors, you aren't likely to find very many of them organically. At Amplify, BIPOC authors are highlighted and celebrated. Here, they don't have to fight to be seen, and you don't have to fight to find them.
We hope that in our shop, you can discover a new favourite read, find stories that speak uniquely to you, learn about a culture outside your own (or more about your own histories), and gain a better understanding of the systems that connect us all.
Looking for something super specific?
Have a scroll through our tag directory to help direct your search and bring you to curated collections, as grouped by subgenres, identity markers, and more!
