An eye-opening and courageous memoir that explores what learning a new language can teach us about distant worlds and, ultimately, ourselves.

After miraculously surviving a serious illness, Katherine Rich found herself at an impasse in her career as a magazine editor. She spontaneously accepted a freelance writing assignment to go to India, where she found herself thunderstruck by the place and the language, and before she knew it she was on her way to Udaipur, a city in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, in order to learn Hindi. Rich documents her experiences—ranging from the bizarre to the frightening to the unexpectedly exhilarating—using Hindi as the lens through which she is given a new perspective not only on India, but on the radical way the country and the language itself were changing her. Fascinated by the process, she went on to interview linguistics experts around the world, reporting back from the frontlines of the science wars on what happens in the brain when we learn a new language. She brings both of these experiences together seamlessly in Dreaming in Hindi, a remarkably unique and thoughtful account of self-discovery.

2. Throughout the book, Rich plays language against science. Why do you think she chose this structure? What do the two halves of the split represent? Mind/body? East/West? How do they symbolize what was going on in her life? How are the two halves reconciled at the end of the book?
3. What benefits does a structure like this have? Are there ways it doesn’t work?
4. Nine-eleven happens on the fifth day of classes, but Rich doesn’t reveal this fact right away. Why do you think she waits to disclose it? In what other ways does she deviate from a straightforward chronology, and why do you think she decided not to write one?
5. The novelist Jayne Anne Phillips described Dreaming in Hindi as “a funny, deeply humane journey of words.” A number of reviewers have remarked on the humor. Do you think humor is universal? What was Rich’s experience with this?
6. Early on, she goes to live with an extended Jain family toward whom she felt a great amount of fondness. What ultimately caused her to leave?
7. Who is the hero of the book? Is there more than one?
8. Dreaming in Hindi contains a number of portraits of Indian women living in one of the most conservative states in India, in a city where a substantial number of women are still in pardah. How does Rich, an independent Western woman, adjust to social conditions? In what was ways does she not?
9. In the book, we learn that there’s no word for privacy in any of the Indian languages. What other Western concepts does Rich find are missing? Which particularly Indian ones does she come to embrace?
10. The book presents the argument that a second language has an effect on the self. Do you agree that language influences the way you see the world? What have been your experiences with this?  What do you think about the claim that different languages engender different emotions?
11. Discuss the very last line in the book, where the deaf school teacher Anukul answers a question that Rich has long entertained. Why do you think she decided to end on this?

This book is on these lists:

• January 2012 Indie Next List
• December 2011 Indie Next List
• November 2011 Indie Next List