Tender Grammars is a collection of lyrical essays chronicling love across language barriers and cross-cultural exchange. Through intimate portraits and braided essays, Serena Alagappan tells the true stories of people who fell in love without speaking the same language or who learned a new language for love. Alagappan explores how couples navigate first phrases, missteps, and misunderstandings; how they search for belonging in each other’s families and cultures; and how language itself shapes who we become in love. Along the way, Alagappan considers what these relationships built across words and worlds can teach us about communication and connection. Blending insights from psychology, translation studies, linguistics, and anthropology with Alagappan’s own bicultural perspective, she reveals how learning another language can transform how we listen, express, and understand ourselves and the world around us.

Serena Alagappan is the author of the chapbook, Sensitive to Temperature. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, POETRY, and elsewhere. A Rhodes Scholar and senior editor at Poets & Writers Magazine, she lives in New York City.