Passion, Memory, and Identity

Marjorie Agosín

Oca 1999 · UNM Press

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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.

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Marjorie Agosin was born in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1955. She has written many books of poetry and fiction. Her childhood and early adolescence were spent with her Jewish family in Chile, where her family also participated in the dominant Catholic culture. The young Agosin became keenly aware of her dual identity in her country, both as a participant and as an outsider. The overthrow of Salvador Allende forced her family to immigrate to Athens, Georgia, where she was then ostracized as an emigrant. She is a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. The poet's current residence is in New England.