MOTHER TONGUE | Felema Yemaneberhan | Architectural Designer

‘Mother Tongue’. What does it mean?

Is it the spoken language of home, the language of parents, ancestors, and country of origin?  Is the language of place, a rooted connection to heritage, tradition, people, music, rituals, religion? The DNA of a particular ethnic experience?  ‘Mother Tongue’ merges the past and present, a sometimes invisible gift of identity, particularly when displaced in another land.

Felema Yemaneberhan grew up in Los Angeles, but throughout her childhood she was brought back to another home, in Eritrea, north of Ethiopia, a country traumatized by Italian colonization and Civil War.  In the US, before the age of 5, she only spoke Tigrinya, the language of her ancestral home, a place where her parents still anticipate returning.