Uncertain Travelers

by Agosin, Marjorie; Berg, Mary G.

• ISBN13: 9780874519457
• ISBN10: 0874519454
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-08-01
• Publisher: Brandeis Univ

Summary

Over a three-year period, award-winning Chilean poet and human rights activist Marjorie Agosin interviewed nine Jewish women immigrants who arrived in the US from Europe and Latin America between 1939 and the 1970s. Some came as children, others as adults; some were well-off, others refugees. These conversations reveal diverse experiences of exile as well as multiple attitudes toward North American politics, people, and culture. "What I found most amazing as I grew to know these women," Agosin writes, "was that despite such profound differences, we all shared something greater: the experience of exile and the quality of being foreign." Arranged chronologically, with the older women speaking first, each conversation opens with a short introduction that provides context for each woman's life. These uncertain travelers -- so named to highlight the possibility and difficulty of their journeys -- discuss food, friendship, work, language, writing, anti-semitism, and politics, in familiar language. Angry, affecting, and disturbing, the conversations unfold as they do in life, inviting the reader to share an extended meditation on how writing, speaking, and memory join to restore a personal and collective past.

Author Biography

MARJORIE AGOSIN is Professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. Her many books include A Map of Hope (1999), Dear Anne Frank (1998), Always from Somewhere Else (1998), Ashes of Revolt (1996), and A Cross and a Star (1995). She recently received an award from the Boston division of the United Nations for her work in human rights.

Table of Contents

Ackowledgments	vii
Marjorie Agosin: Introduction	2	(6)
Zezette Larsen	8	(32)
Elena Ottolenghi Nightingale	40	(36)
Susan Bendor	76	(20)
Matilde Salganicoff	96	(30)
Renata Brailovsky	126	(16)
Susan Rubin Suleiman	142	(18)
Katherine Scherzer Wenger	160	(22)
Silvia Zeldis Testa	182	(12)
Ruth Behar	194	(15)
Epilogue	209	(2)
Notes	211