Trauma, Memory and Identity in Five Jewish Novels from the Southern Cone

Rezensionen / Stimmen

In Trauma, Memory and Identity in Five Jewish Novels from the Southern Cone, Debora Cordeiro Rosa eloquently analyzes crucial aspects of the main historical stages of Jewish identity construction in Latin America. She discusses five well-chosen novels by Teresa Porzecanski (Uruguay), Sonia Guralnik (Chile), Susana Gertopan (Paraguay), Francisco Dzialovsky (Brazil), and Marcelo Birmajer (Argentina) who depict three generations of immigrants from the 1920's to the 1990's. These immigrants struggle with the desire, resistance and difficulty to leave behind trauma and memory in the process of identity negotiation. This book takes the challenge and succeeds in spelling out the personal struggles of Jewish immigrants with their new 'foreign' status. It does an excellent job of explaining key aspects of the immigrant's experience as they are portrayed in Latin American literature. It delves into the history of immigration to the Southern Cone and Brazil, it questions what it means to be a Jew, the concept of Home, the importance of language in group identity, and the problems of assimilation and acculturation, among other issues. Trauma, Memory and Identity is a must-read book for students and scholars who are interested in Immigration, Identity and Diaspora in Latin America. -- Ariana Huberman, Haverford College Among recent studies of Latin American Jewish writing, Debora Cordeiro-Rosa's Trauma, Memory and Identity in Five Jewish Novels from the Southern Cone especially stands out for its emphasis on works set in the early decades of the twentieth century, when South American Jewish communities were full of freshly arrived immigrants still trying to absorb the shock of persecution, displacement, and immigration while resourcefully adapting their Jewish identities to life in the New World. Cordeiro-Rosa explores the cultural production of the scarcely-known Jewish community of Paraguay along with writing from such established centers of Jewish life as Buenos Aires. The study offers both a general informative overview of Latin American Jewish social and cultural history and literature and detailed analyses of five novels chosen to represent the countries of the Southern Cone of South America. -- Naomi Lindstrom, University of Texas at Austin Cordeiro Rosa (Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando) introduces nonspecialists to the topic of Jewish Latin American identity, specifically, the experiences of first-, second-, and third-generation Jewish Latin Americans in the Southern Cone during the 20th century. She shows how selected characters in five novels move from trauma and memory to the formation of new identities, with varying success. She describes the difficulties of the first-generation immigrant in Uruguayan Teresa Porzecanski's Perfumes de Cartago, Chilean Sonia Guralnik's Para siempre en mi memoria, and Paraguayan Susana Gertopan's Barrio Palestina. In the fourth novel, Brazilian Francisco Dzialovsky's O Terceiro Testamento, Cordeiro Rosa tells of a second-generation youth who feels more Brazilian than his parents (concentration-camp survivors) but still faces personal issues of integration. In the fifth novel, Argentine Marcelo Birmajer's No tan distinto, the author relates how a third-generation Jew experiences identity conflicts different from those of previous generations and questions the meaning and nature of his own Jewishness. The novels are well chosen, illustrating the inherent tension between cultural integrity and assimilation....the novels and their subject matter are interesting, and the book is accessible. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *