In this workshop Malwina Gudowska, writer, author and linguist, joins us to share her expertise on raising multilingual and multicultural children and to discuss what research tells us about growing up in two or more languages. Malwina will debunk the prevalent myths around raising multilingual children, focusing also on the expectations families place upon themselves when navigating multilingualism.
Through key insights from her book, Mother Tongue Tied: On Language, Motherhood & Multilingualism – Disrupting Myths & Finding Meaning, Malwina will explore the emotional landscape of raising multilingual children and discuss what we can all do to support multilingualism and heritage languages in the home and the community with confidence. She will also share practical strategies and highlight the importance of professional guidance while keeping the emotional aspects of multilingual life and caregiving at the forefront of the conversation.
Ultimately, this is a workshop on how we can encourage our children to love multilingualism and to use our heritage languages, while acknowledging that multilingual parenting is emotional labour and care work, teeming with expectations and emotions.
This workshop is interactive and there will be various activities and a Q&A session with the opportunity for parents and caregivers to ask questions, connect and share experiences.
Children are very welcome, though we ask that they are supervised by a parent at all times.
Refreshments will be available.
Malwina Gudowska is the author of Mother Tongue Tied: On Language, Motherhood & Multilingualism – Disrupting Myths & Finding Meaning (Footnote Press, 2024). A National Magazine Award winner, her writing has appeared in Vogue, Financial Times, The Globe and Mail and in several anthologies. In her award-winning newsletter Motherlingual, she examines the intersection of language and motherhood, and her PhD research focuses on the emotions of mothers raising multilingual children. She lives in London with her partner and two multilingual children.
Malwina’s book will be available to purchase at the event. It sheds light on the ways in which we navigate language, its power to shape and reshape lives, and the ripple effects felt far beyond any one home or any one language. Mother Tongue Tied explores the emotional weight of raising multilingual children while grappling with your own identity and notions of home.
What other authors are saying about Mother Tongue Tied:
“A thoughtful, brilliant and necessary immersion into the worlds we pass along with language. Let me say this one in Spanish: maravilloso.”― Jazmina Barrera, author of Linea Nigra
“Edifying and enlivening” ― Kate Baer, 3x New York Times bestselling author of And Yet and What Kind of Woman
“Gudowska writes with eloquence and tenderness from within the daily, sometimes heroic, often dishevelled realities of multilingual mothering” ― Julie Sedivy, author of Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self