Passion, Memory, and Identity: Twentieth-Century Latin American Jewish Women Writers

by AGOSIN MARJORIE (ED)

• ISBN13: 9780826320490
• ISBN10: 082632049X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr

Summary

This collection of essays, written by a distinguished group of literary critics, explores the Jewish womans experience in Latin America. It came about as an attempt to define the cultural experience of Jewish Latin American women writers, as well as their relationship with their various countries. Included are Ilan Stavans and Magdalena Maiz-Pena writing on Mexico, David William Foster on Argentina, Regina Igel and Nelson Vieira on Brazil, Elizabeth Ross Horan on Chile and Uruguay, Joan Friedman on Venezuela, and Ruth Behar, Ester Shapiro Rok, and Rosa Lowinger on Cuba. As Marjorie Agosn notes, the role of memory for the writers included in this volume is a central theme. The majority of them are daughters of Sephardic or Ashkenazi immigrants, many of whom fled the Holocaust. They write openly about their identity and their hybrid condition as Jews in predominantly Catholic countries, an issue that has not, until recently, been addressed with candor.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Passion and Memory: Latin American Jewish Writers	ix
Marjorie Agosin
On Separate Ground	1	(16)
Ilan Stavans
Mapping the Jewish Female Voice in Contemporary Mexican Narrative	17	(18)
Magdalena Maiz-Pena
Recent Argentine Women Writers of Jewish Descent	35	(24)
David William Foster
Brazilian Jewish Women Writers at the Crossroads	59	(26)
Regina Igel
Clarice Lispector's Jewish Universe: Passion in Search of Narrative Identity	85	(30)
Nelson H. Vieira
Emigrant Memory: Jewish Women Writers in Chile and Uruguay	115	(46)
Elizabeth Rosa Horan
Venezuelan Jewish Women Writers and the Search for Heritage	161	(36)
Joan Esther Friedman
In Search of the Cuban Jewish Woman Writer: A Trialogue/Un Trialogo	197	(18)
Ruth Behar
Ester Shapiro Rok
Rosa Lowinger
List Of Contributors	215