Birthday Wishes

~ Cheryl

Yes, it is that time of year again. The time at which I marvel that I have survived this long, given the murder and suicide rates for trans women. I am really very lucky indeed, and certainly would not be here now had it not been for Kevin and my mother.

It is also the time when your social media feeds get filled with people saying kind things, and you get to wondering how you can make use of that without it seeming to be “all about me”.

On Twitter I asked people if they’d send me birthday wishes in languages other than English. I’ve tried to RT them all so you can see the variety (here). That was partly to give an international feel to them, but also because I have been horrified by stories like this one from the Toronto Star which reveals that reveals that as many as half of the world’s 7,000 distinct languages are expected to be extinct by the end of the century. We are losing one every 14 days, and I find that very sad.

If I am to be allowed one feasible wish, however (as opposed to one that requires a miraculous change of heart by the Department of Homeland Security) I’d ask you all to buy some great books by women writers. We are, after all, having this Women In Genre month, and there’s plenty of really good stuff to choose from.

Night Shade authors in particular need your support right now. You can get their books DRM-free from Baen. I particularly recommend the following:

Weightless books also have many fine books by women, and I’ll single out a few published by Small Beer:

And then of course there’s my own store, were the fabulous books by women are so numerous it seems unfair to pick favorites.

3 thoughts on “Birthday Wishes”

  1. Ծնունդդ շնորհավոր (Happy birthday in Armenian) – I work a lot with the Armenians and work has taken me there on more than one occasion – weird and fascinating place well worth a visit…

    Making a note of the books, although I have already read “At the mouth of the river of bees”

    May I recommend Halte à la mort des langues by Claude Hagege – my review copied below

    Good

    One linguists anguished plea to save the world’s endangered languages

    Twenty-five languages die each year; at this pace, half the world’s five thousand languages will disappear within the next century & probably sooner as their disappearance appears to be accelerating. Hagege gives a broad introduction to linguistics outlining what constitutes a language, how languages disappear etc and then using extensive examples (including but not limited to aboriginal languages, latin, Yiddish & Hebrew (as an example of languages come back from the dead) and native American tongues) goes on to show that the death of language is a calamaty on par with the extinction of animals. Sometimes dry but never boring this is probably a book if your already interested in linguistics rather than a book for everyone.

    Overall – an impassioned appeal to save many languages under threat

  2. Twitter is refusing to load more than the last few tweets for me, but Hawaiian probably hasn’t been done yet: Hauʻoli lā hānau!

    and you get to wondering how you can make use of that without it seeming to be “all about me”

    Isn’t being all about you the point of celebrating your birthday??

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