"On Being a Self-Taught Writer: Sulaiman Addonia in Conversation [with Elisabeth Bekers and VUB students] about Silence is My Mother Tongue " Transcribed by Parham Aledavood

Sulaiman Addonia is an Eritrean-Ethiopian-British writer who lives in Brussels. His first novel, The Consequences of Love, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and has been published in more than 20 languages. Silence Is My Mother Tongue, the work on which this conversation focuses, was longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and shortlisted for the 2021 Lambda Awards. This interview originally took place during a webinar in the context of the “Postcolonial Literature in English” Master course taught by Prof. dr. Elisabeth Bekers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in the autumn of 2020. Students in the “Master Taal- en Letterkunde” and the international “Multilingual Master in Linguistics and Literary Studies” introduced the author to the guests in the audience (which included colleagues and students from VUB and beyond) and prepared and asked the questions. Participants were invited to ask questions or share their observations regarding passages in the text that spoke to them in particular. Parham Aledavood subsequently transcribed the interview, which was later edited by Elisabeth Bekers.

Keywords: Sulaiman Addonia, Silence is My Mother Tongue, migration, writing process.