Slip of the Tongue

Slip of the Tongue is a love letter to words and the myriad and contradictory ways we use them. Author Katie Haegele is a respected memoirist who makes sense of the world around her by looking at the ways we use language: to communicate, to make art, and simply to survive. She takes us through her life by describing her family’s rich linguistic history and her own coming of age as a feminist and an artist, and introduces us to her hometown of Philadelphia, a city lively with graffiti, poetry, and the remnants of its colonial heritage. She connects history to the present with research, interviews, and musings on digital technology and the contemporary state of the English language. As bawdy and brainy as it is heart-warming, Slip of the Tongue is a celebration of humanity in all its complicated beauty. Haegele’s tone is personal and conversational—she is able to explore her subjects with both intellectual vigor and a lot of heart. Her memoir takes the usually inaccessible academic subject of linguistics and joyfully breaks it open for all of us to see and marvel at.