Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peacetalk 101 | 2003 | Suzette Haden Elgin | Buy |
Peacetalk 101 (2003) appeared near the end of Suzette Haden Elgin’s publishing career and brings together her two main preoccupations: science fiction and the practical study of language. The novella-length work uses a speculative premise to examine how humans talk to one another when under stress or in conflict, a theme Elgin had explored at book length in her Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense series.
The work is slim but representative of Elgin’s cross-genre sensibility. Where her self-help books addressed verbal self-defense in practical terms, Peacetalk 101 approaches similar questions through story, allowing the fictional framing to open up possibilities that a purely instructional text cannot. It shows a writer still thinking about language and power in the final years of her career.