By Susan Onthank Mates. 123 pp. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 1994. $22.95. ISBN 0-87745-467-1.
"Maybe I never learned this language right, medicine," saysthe sorrowful and guilt-laced physician protagonist of one storyin this superb collection. "Oh god how I loved my language mytongue my home," says a young American girl marooned in a vengefulGerman boarding school. Each of these 12 stories is a seriousattempt to reclaim a language — simultaneously poetic,empirical, private, and universal. That their author is a doctorsort of matters, but this is no ordinary musing about medicalpractice. Instead, Susan Onthank Mates lets her medicine registerin the deepest, most silent places of her writerly . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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