Father tongue

Drawing on a true historical event, the young South Tyrolean author Miriam Unterthiner tells the story of a young woman’s life and her journey toward emancipation. She artfully weaves together different levels of speech and language, thereby making the confines of village society, as well as the oppression of women and their rebellion, palpable. The main character, Maria, is searching for her own identity, her own self, her own voice. Unterthiner writes a new ending for Maria—one she herself was never allowed to experience.

Maria gives voice to herself .
In short-paced, musical prose, a woman’s fate is exemplified here: born, emotionally neglected, deformed, not recognized as a daughter. This takes its toll on the body: a hunchback forms as a kind of protective posture.

Like this. Head down. Like this. Back forward. Like this. Face down. Like this. Gaze to the floor
She is corrected from the outside. A wooden corset pushes its way into the flow of speech and over her body. But Maria has an ally: this very floor.

I speak here. Yes. I speak here. As the floor. Is spoken here.
Like the chorus in a Greek tragedy, the floor cradles and cares for the “Måidel” or, even more diminutively, the “Is Måidele,” providing a firm footing—placed across the bottom of the page, as a secure foundation where Maria is in good hands.

And truly, as in a philosophical fable, in the struggle for language, she succeeds, defying everything, in taking a step forward, toward herself! AAAAAAAAAAA she lets out her birth cry and claims her name: MARIA ICH.