A sonic essay based on the novel “Bitter in the Mouth” by Monique Truong, published by Chatto&Windus in 2010.
In the novel, Truong weaves the protagonist Linda’s navigating of her identity and ways of being and knowing in the world–i.e. coming of Vietnamese racial heritage in a claustrophobic town in the American South, as well as her neurodivergency–with the associations she can’t help but make between words and tastes.
Bitter manages to convey multiple realities simultaneously present, but not always visible, especially from the point of view of the “norm.” This approach has been interpreted as the refusal to “neoliberal multiculturalism’s demand for authenticity via visible racial difference,” which I find totally inspiring.
I saw that these associations were never interpreted sonically and it is only when words are heard with music–or have a certain musical quality–that Linda can have a rest from the incomings, so I translated some of troubling situations into a sonic realm.
