Passion, Memory and Identity: Twentieth-Century Latin American Jewish Women Writers (Jewish Latin America Series)

This collection of essays, written by a distinguished group of literary critics, explores the Jewish woman's 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-Peña 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 Agosín 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.