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

By (author) Debora Cordeiro Rosa

Not available to order

Publication date:

19 April 2012

Length of book:

206 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739172988

The Jewish presence in Latin America is a recent chapter in Jewish history that has produced a remarkable body of literature that gives voice to the fascinating experience of Jews in Latin American lands. This book explores the complexity of Jewish identity in Latin America through the fictional Jewish characters of five novels written by Jewish authors from the Southern Cone: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. It examines how trauma and memory have profound effects on shaping the identity of these Jewish characters who have to forge a new identity as they begin to interact with the Latin American societies of their newly adopted homes. The first three novels present stories narrated by the first generation of immigrants who arrived in Latin American lands escaping pogroms in Russia, and the increasing persecution and anti-Semitism in Europe, in the decades prior to World War II. The fourth novel analyses the identity conflicts experienced by a second generation Latin American born Jew who questions his Jewish, questions of assimilation and integration in to his society. The last novel closes this study with the existential crisis experienced by a perfectly assimilated non-religious Jew, who enquires about his Jewishness and compares himself to other Jews around him.

Introduction
Chapter1: History of Immigration to the Southern Cone Countries
Argentina
Brazil
Chile
Paraguay
Uruguay
Chapter 2: Perfumes de Cartago by Teresa Porzecanski - Uruguay
Chapter 3: Para siempre en mi memoria by Sonia Guralnik - Chile
Chapter 4: Barrio Palestina by Susana Gertopan - Paraguay
Chapter 5: O Terceiro Testamento by Francisco Dzialovsky - Brazil
Chapter 6: No tan distinto by Marcelo Birmajer - Argentina
Conclusion

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.