Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Writing beyond writing by Tim Brooks reviewed by Eric Schonstrom in his famous 2005 kenyan college graduation speech, american novelist and infant terrible of the literary world, David Foster Wallace put forth an allegory of two young fish who were asked by an older fish, how's the water? They respond, what is water? The gist of Wallace's speech is that we often don't notice what's right in front of us. This is perhaps most true of the language we use every day. Not only the language, but the very Alphabet. The script we use to communicate our Alphabet is so pervasive on our screens through text messages, social media posts, and emails that we may not stop to consider what it means to shape letters the way we do. The words you are reading right now are written in latin script, a writing system that has been around for about 2300 to 2500 years, depending on which linguist you want to duke it out with.
[00:01:00] What is remarkable about the latin script is not just its history and development, but also the way in which its prevalence has overshadowed the rich diversity of scripts the world over. It is the water we swim in, making it difficult to recognize what other writing systems may exist. That is, unless you dive into Tim Brooks new book, writing beyond writing. The book resists easy taglines. It is an overview of scripts, a delightfully reader friendly survey of how alphabets come to be, but also a manifesto of sorts that takes aim at the dominance of the latin script and what its pervasiveness means in terms of colonialism and social inequity. Its also a memoir of Brookes journey as a wood carver who finds renewed purpose through the use of endangered scripts. And perhaps most vitally, it is a clarion call to save the scripts used around the world by marginalized peoples. Brooks is the creator of the Endangered Alphabets project, which seeks to document, diminishing, and overlook scripts from around the globe. The project includes the Atlas of Endangered Alphabets, an interactive website documenting endangered writing systems such as Wallaboo from Ethiopia, Kodavur of southern India, and Nasi Oyatomong from the indonesian archipelago. Notably, many of the scripts in the atlas are the traditional means of communication of indigenous people in writing. Beyond writing, Brooks crystallizes the idea that preserving indigenous scripts is essential to maintaining the identity and dignity of minority groups that already face economic, racial, and social oppression. But why are indigenous scripts threatened? The culprit is often nationalism. The first act of many a newly independent nation is to give the impression of unity and consolidation and to avoid further fragmentation by repressing the independent spirit of regional or ethnic minorities, writes Brooks. Language rights, then, are human rights, and an undangered Alphabet can be a sign that a people has been marginalized, suppressed, even slaughtered. Perhaps the most surprising reveal in writing beyond writing is that endangered scripts are not just the dusty vestiges of fast disappearing cultures in need of immediate preservation, but that some groups are in the process of creating new scripts as a means of establishing cultural autonomy. Take the drama of the Adlam script, the writing system used by the people of guinea. Created by two brothers, Abdullah and Ibrahima Bari over the past few decades, the script is now taught in Africa, Europe, and the United States. Adlam was created as a means of delineating cultural heritage. Brooks one of the strongest incentives to create a script is to assert one's own identity and autonomy in the face of those who would deny them. Not much escapes the wide ranging scope of the book, as even emojis are offered up as a recent Alphabet, Brooks is radically egalitarian when it comes to assessing pictorial versus character driven scripts, say, egyptian hieroglyphics versus the cyrillic Alphabet. He writes movingly about the way in which western notions of progress and advancement may have tenets of racist colonial ideologies and how western assumptions about language, benign though they may seem, negatively impact indigenous writing systems. Our collective goal is to leave the past behind, to grow out of it in a continuous process of modernization and improvement, he writes. But script itself is a reminder of heritage identity, the right to exist in the face of threat from and erosion by more powerful neighbors. It is in the quieter moments of writing beyond writing that we get up close and personal with the way in which these scripts are not just cultural artifacts but living, breathing expressions of how distinct groups of people think. As a wood carver, Brooks interest in writing systems came about when carving some slabs of hardwood with chinese symbols as gifts for his children, Brooks gives us a tour of his own tactile relationship with scripps through stories of his attempts to carve the shapes. I want my carvings to look written, or even, in some cases, drawn, he writes. If possible, I want them to look beautiful, as though they were written with love and care by a person. Brooks makes the case that writing in these scripts is nothing short of an extension of the human hand and the human mind. Truth be told, reading, writing beyond writing may result in a minor existential crisis. After all, Brooks points out that the latin Alphabet spread so widely in part because it is a very print friendly medium. The shapes of the letters are uniquely suited to the printing press and mass production. The Alphabet we use every day is a tool of the industrial revolution as much as it is a by product of colonial dispossession of native peoples around the world. Its hard to read Brookes book without ruminating on ones own role in perpetuating the universalization of one Alphabet over a diverse array of unique and fascinating scripts. The Internet has provided us all with the opportunity to bring every corner of the globe into our homes through the screens of our laptops and phones. But while the World Wide Web has given us the ability to see and interact with cultures all over the world, it also has a flattening effect. The software that runs our devices is written primarily in the latin Alphabet, and thus the Internet, despite the promise of offering a multiplicity of perspectives, is essentially monolithic, alphabetically speaking. While efforts are underway to create options for other scripts, the overwhelming mass of the Internet favors the latin Alphabet. Rather than nurturing diversity in scripts, the web has steamrolled expression and language, the sheer scope of the Internet pushing us closer and closer to the simplest form of Alphabet binary code. Which is why it's surprising, despite the odds stacked against indigenous and rare alphabets, that writing beyond writing is such a hopeful book. Brooks is nothing if not a cheerful and humorous optimist throughout, happily taking aim at the imagined superiority of colonial ideologies and constantly siding with the marginalized people of history. And today, if anything, one puts down the book with renewed positivity and faith in the incredible richness of human expression and an eager desire to look below the surface of the latin Alphabet and explore.
[00:07:28] This article was written by Eric Schonstrom, author of Wild the indoor the wisdom of the body and I probably should have brought a tent. His articles and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles review of Books, essay Daily, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
[00:07:46] Teaches writing at Champlain College.
[00:07:49] Originally published in multilingual magazine, issue 231 August 2024.
