Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: Holmes & Meier Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
"Most readers north of the Rio Grande are not aware that waves of immigrants have created an ethnically diverse culture in Latin America, a mosaic of particular visions and voices that includes a cohesive Jewish community with roots in Eastern Europe and as far back as pre-Columbian Spain. In this unique anthology, Ilan Stavans - who is at home both in Jewish and Latino cultures - introduces us to engaging writers, the histories of the different communities in which they emerged, their literary tradition and cultural predicament." "Organized from a geographic and historical perspective, Tropical Synagogues includes stories by acclaimed and new voices - some appearing in English for the first time. We encounter the beginnings of the Jewish literary tradition on the continent in the work of Alberto Gerchunoff, who immigrated to Argentina during the late nineteenth century and influenced future generations of writers such as Isidoro Blaisten, German Rozenmacher, Gerardo Mario Goloboff, and Mario Szichman. Stories also appear by celebrated writers such as Moacyr Scliar, Clarice Lispector, Isaac Goldemberg, and Victor Perera, who may be more familiar to English-speaking readers. Another vital part of this tradition are the innovative women writers who have been a major force in the development of Latin American fiction, represented here by Alicia Steimberg, Nora Glickman, Aida Bortnik, Margo Glantz, Esther Seligson, Elisa Lerner, Angelina Muniz-Huberman, and Alicia Lubitch Domecq." "The image of the "tropical synagogue" evokes the collective voice and imagination that come to life on the pages of this book. Conjuring a fantastic synthesis of the Old and New World, tradition and exoticism, sensuality and metaphysics, it is a telling metaphor for the little known but compelling short fiction collected here."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Tropical Synagogues
Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: Holmes & Meier Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
"Most readers north of the Rio Grande are not aware that waves of immigrants have created an ethnically diverse culture in Latin America, a mosaic of particular visions and voices that includes a cohesive Jewish community with roots in Eastern Europe and as far back as pre-Columbian Spain. In this unique anthology, Ilan Stavans - who is at home both in Jewish and Latino cultures - introduces us to engaging writers, the histories of the different communities in which they emerged, their literary tradition and cultural predicament." "Organized from a geographic and historical perspective, Tropical Synagogues includes stories by acclaimed and new voices - some appearing in English for the first time. We encounter the beginnings of the Jewish literary tradition on the continent in the work of Alberto Gerchunoff, who immigrated to Argentina during the late nineteenth century and influenced future generations of writers such as Isidoro Blaisten, German Rozenmacher, Gerardo Mario Goloboff, and Mario Szichman. Stories also appear by celebrated writers such as Moacyr Scliar, Clarice Lispector, Isaac Goldemberg, and Victor Perera, who may be more familiar to English-speaking readers. Another vital part of this tradition are the innovative women writers who have been a major force in the development of Latin American fiction, represented here by Alicia Steimberg, Nora Glickman, Aida Bortnik, Margo Glantz, Esther Seligson, Elisa Lerner, Angelina Muniz-Huberman, and Alicia Lubitch Domecq." "The image of the "tropical synagogue" evokes the collective voice and imagination that come to life on the pages of this book. Conjuring a fantastic synthesis of the Old and New World, tradition and exoticism, sensuality and metaphysics, it is a telling metaphor for the little known but compelling short fiction collected here."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Publisher: Holmes & Meier Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
"Most readers north of the Rio Grande are not aware that waves of immigrants have created an ethnically diverse culture in Latin America, a mosaic of particular visions and voices that includes a cohesive Jewish community with roots in Eastern Europe and as far back as pre-Columbian Spain. In this unique anthology, Ilan Stavans - who is at home both in Jewish and Latino cultures - introduces us to engaging writers, the histories of the different communities in which they emerged, their literary tradition and cultural predicament." "Organized from a geographic and historical perspective, Tropical Synagogues includes stories by acclaimed and new voices - some appearing in English for the first time. We encounter the beginnings of the Jewish literary tradition on the continent in the work of Alberto Gerchunoff, who immigrated to Argentina during the late nineteenth century and influenced future generations of writers such as Isidoro Blaisten, German Rozenmacher, Gerardo Mario Goloboff, and Mario Szichman. Stories also appear by celebrated writers such as Moacyr Scliar, Clarice Lispector, Isaac Goldemberg, and Victor Perera, who may be more familiar to English-speaking readers. Another vital part of this tradition are the innovative women writers who have been a major force in the development of Latin American fiction, represented here by Alicia Steimberg, Nora Glickman, Aida Bortnik, Margo Glantz, Esther Seligson, Elisa Lerner, Angelina Muniz-Huberman, and Alicia Lubitch Domecq." "The image of the "tropical synagogue" evokes the collective voice and imagination that come to life on the pages of this book. Conjuring a fantastic synthesis of the Old and New World, tradition and exoticism, sensuality and metaphysics, it is a telling metaphor for the little known but compelling short fiction collected here."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Travel Guide to the Jewish Caribbean and South America, A
Author: Frank, Ben G.
Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 1455613304
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 651
Book Description
A Travel Guide to the Jewish Caribbean and South America is a tremendous work encompassing history, culture, and modern travel to some of the most important sites in these places. This is a practical, anecdotal, and adventurous journey including kosher restaurants, cafes, synagogues, and museums, plus cultural and heritage sites. Though many understand American Jewish history as beginning with the East European mass immigration of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jews in the Americas planted roots as early as 1654, when twenty-three Jews fleeing the Inquisition arrived in New Amsterdam. While the European roots of American Jews are often explored, less discussed are the still-vibrant Jewish communities throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Explored here are the oldest surviving synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, Mikve Israel in Curaçao; the largest Jewish community in the Caribbean, in Puerto Rico; the three synagogues in Havana, Cuba; the Israeli cafe in Cuzco, Peru, near the historic Inca site, Machu Picchu; and other Jewish sites from Buenos Aires to Mexico City. Also included are general travel information and tips.
Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 1455613304
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 651
Book Description
A Travel Guide to the Jewish Caribbean and South America is a tremendous work encompassing history, culture, and modern travel to some of the most important sites in these places. This is a practical, anecdotal, and adventurous journey including kosher restaurants, cafes, synagogues, and museums, plus cultural and heritage sites. Though many understand American Jewish history as beginning with the East European mass immigration of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jews in the Americas planted roots as early as 1654, when twenty-three Jews fleeing the Inquisition arrived in New Amsterdam. While the European roots of American Jews are often explored, less discussed are the still-vibrant Jewish communities throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Explored here are the oldest surviving synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, Mikve Israel in Curaçao; the largest Jewish community in the Caribbean, in Puerto Rico; the three synagogues in Havana, Cuba; the Israeli cafe in Cuzco, Peru, near the historic Inca site, Machu Picchu; and other Jewish sites from Buenos Aires to Mexico City. Also included are general travel information and tips.
The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature
Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 030749053X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482
Book Description
The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 gave rise to a series of rich, diverse diasporas that were interconnected through a common vision and joie de vivre. The exodus took these Sephardim to other European countries; to North Africa, Asia Minor, and South America; and, eventually, to the American colonies. In each community new literary and artistic forms grew out of the melding of their Judeo-Spanish legacy with the cultures of their host countries, and that process has continued to the present day. This multilingual tradition brought with it both opportunities and challenges that will resonate within any contemporary culture: the status of minorities within the larger society; the tension between a civil, democratic tradition and the anti-Semitism ready to undermine it; and the opposing forces of religion and secularism. Ilan Stavans has been described by The Washington Post as “Latin America’s liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast.” And the Forward calls him “a maverick intellectual whose canonical work has already produced a whole array of marvels that are redefining Jewishness.” This new anthology contains fiction, memoirs, essays, and poetry from twenty-eight writers who span more than 150 years. Included are Emma Lazarus’s legendary poem “The New Colossus,” inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty; the hypnotizing prose of Greece-born, Switzerland-based Albert Cohen; Nobel—Prize winner Elias Canetti’s ruminations on Europe before World War II; Albert Memmi’s identity quest as an Arab Jew in France; Primo Levi’s testimony on the Holocaust; and A. B. Yehoshua’s epic stories set in Israel today. When read together, these explorations offer an astonishingly incisive collective portrait of the “other Jews,” Sephardim who long for la España perdida, their lost ancestral home, even as they create a vibrant, multifaceted literary tradition in exile.
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 030749053X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482
Book Description
The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 gave rise to a series of rich, diverse diasporas that were interconnected through a common vision and joie de vivre. The exodus took these Sephardim to other European countries; to North Africa, Asia Minor, and South America; and, eventually, to the American colonies. In each community new literary and artistic forms grew out of the melding of their Judeo-Spanish legacy with the cultures of their host countries, and that process has continued to the present day. This multilingual tradition brought with it both opportunities and challenges that will resonate within any contemporary culture: the status of minorities within the larger society; the tension between a civil, democratic tradition and the anti-Semitism ready to undermine it; and the opposing forces of religion and secularism. Ilan Stavans has been described by The Washington Post as “Latin America’s liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast.” And the Forward calls him “a maverick intellectual whose canonical work has already produced a whole array of marvels that are redefining Jewishness.” This new anthology contains fiction, memoirs, essays, and poetry from twenty-eight writers who span more than 150 years. Included are Emma Lazarus’s legendary poem “The New Colossus,” inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty; the hypnotizing prose of Greece-born, Switzerland-based Albert Cohen; Nobel—Prize winner Elias Canetti’s ruminations on Europe before World War II; Albert Memmi’s identity quest as an Arab Jew in France; Primo Levi’s testimony on the Holocaust; and A. B. Yehoshua’s epic stories set in Israel today. When read together, these explorations offer an astonishingly incisive collective portrait of the “other Jews,” Sephardim who long for la España perdida, their lost ancestral home, even as they create a vibrant, multifaceted literary tradition in exile.
Revolutionary Visions
Author: Stephanie M. Pridgeon
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 148750814X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Revolutionary Visions traces the emergence of a growing corpus of Latin American films that explore the legacy of Jewish encounters with revolutionary political movements in 1960s and 1970s Latin America.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 148750814X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Revolutionary Visions traces the emergence of a growing corpus of Latin American films that explore the legacy of Jewish encounters with revolutionary political movements in 1960s and 1970s Latin America.
Oy, Caramba!
Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826354963
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
“Writers from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, and other countries represent an ethnically diverse culture with roots in eastern Europe as well as Spain. . . . The anthology includes tales by such masters as Alberto Gerchunoff, . . . a large number of innovative women writers, and some authors more familiar to English-speaking readers.”—Library Journal “Reminds us that society south of the border is just as multicultural as in the US, and that Jews have played an important role in it since the time of the Spanish conquest.”—Publishers Weekly Jewish identity and magical realism are the themes of the tales of adventure and cultural alienation collected here by the leading authority on Jewish Latin American literature. First published in 1994 as Tropical Synagogues: Short Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers, Ilan Stavans’s classic anthology is expanded and updated in this new edition.
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826354963
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
“Writers from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, and other countries represent an ethnically diverse culture with roots in eastern Europe as well as Spain. . . . The anthology includes tales by such masters as Alberto Gerchunoff, . . . a large number of innovative women writers, and some authors more familiar to English-speaking readers.”—Library Journal “Reminds us that society south of the border is just as multicultural as in the US, and that Jews have played an important role in it since the time of the Spanish conquest.”—Publishers Weekly Jewish identity and magical realism are the themes of the tales of adventure and cultural alienation collected here by the leading authority on Jewish Latin American literature. First published in 1994 as Tropical Synagogues: Short Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers, Ilan Stavans’s classic anthology is expanded and updated in this new edition.
The Scroll and the Cross
Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136698523
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
Jews and Latinos have been unlikely partners through tumultuous times. This groundbreaking, eclectic book of readings, edited by Ilan Stavans, whom The Washington Post described as "one of our foremost cultural critics," offers a sideboard of the ups and downs of that partnership. It includes some seventy canonical authors, Jews and non-Jews alike, through whose diverse oeuvre-poetry, fiction, theater, personal and philosophical essays, correspondence, historical documents, and even kitchen recipes-the reader is able to navigate the shifting waters of history, from Spain in the tenth century to the Spanish-speaking Americas and the United States today. The Reader showcases the writings of such notable authors as Solomon ibn Gabirol, Maimonides, Miguel de Cervantes, Henry W. Longfellow, Miguel de Unamuno, Federico García Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges, Jacobo Timerman, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ruth Behar, and Ariel Dorfman to name only a few.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136698523
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
Jews and Latinos have been unlikely partners through tumultuous times. This groundbreaking, eclectic book of readings, edited by Ilan Stavans, whom The Washington Post described as "one of our foremost cultural critics," offers a sideboard of the ups and downs of that partnership. It includes some seventy canonical authors, Jews and non-Jews alike, through whose diverse oeuvre-poetry, fiction, theater, personal and philosophical essays, correspondence, historical documents, and even kitchen recipes-the reader is able to navigate the shifting waters of history, from Spain in the tenth century to the Spanish-speaking Americas and the United States today. The Reader showcases the writings of such notable authors as Solomon ibn Gabirol, Maimonides, Miguel de Cervantes, Henry W. Longfellow, Miguel de Unamuno, Federico García Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges, Jacobo Timerman, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ruth Behar, and Ariel Dorfman to name only a few.
The Inveterate Dreamer
Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803292789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
Not only do "modern" Jewish languages like Yiddish and Hebrew have their own Jewish writers, but every major Western tongue?from German and Russian to English and Portuguese?does as well. These writers are often at the crossroad between the two traditions: their Jewish one and their own national one. Is there such a thing as a modern Jewish literary tradition, one navigating across linguistic and national lines? If so, how should one define it? Ilan Stavans is uniquely qualified to answer these questions and to comment on the power and challenges of cultural margins and literary crossings. He has been at the forefront of an appreciation of the Jewish literary tradition that is less asphyxiating, more global. His reflections on Jewish Latin America have won him the nickname "pathfinder." This incomparable volume showcases Stavans's most insightful and provocative?and at times controversial?observations on transnational Jewish culture and literature. Stavans explores the problems and prospects of representing Jewish experiences through such media as Holocaust memoirs and Jewish museums; astutely comments on well-known intellectual figures, including Lionel Trilling, Isaac Babel, Primo Levi, Harold Bloom, and Walter Benjamin; engages in memorable conversations with Norman Manea, Joseph Brodsky, and Ariel Dorfman; and offers compelling glimpses of revelatory moments in his own life.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803292789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
Not only do "modern" Jewish languages like Yiddish and Hebrew have their own Jewish writers, but every major Western tongue?from German and Russian to English and Portuguese?does as well. These writers are often at the crossroad between the two traditions: their Jewish one and their own national one. Is there such a thing as a modern Jewish literary tradition, one navigating across linguistic and national lines? If so, how should one define it? Ilan Stavans is uniquely qualified to answer these questions and to comment on the power and challenges of cultural margins and literary crossings. He has been at the forefront of an appreciation of the Jewish literary tradition that is less asphyxiating, more global. His reflections on Jewish Latin America have won him the nickname "pathfinder." This incomparable volume showcases Stavans's most insightful and provocative?and at times controversial?observations on transnational Jewish culture and literature. Stavans explores the problems and prospects of representing Jewish experiences through such media as Holocaust memoirs and Jewish museums; astutely comments on well-known intellectual figures, including Lionel Trilling, Isaac Babel, Primo Levi, Harold Bloom, and Walter Benjamin; engages in memorable conversations with Norman Manea, Joseph Brodsky, and Ariel Dorfman; and offers compelling glimpses of revelatory moments in his own life.
Borges, the Jew
Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438461437
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Book Description
Explores Borgess infatuation with Jewish history and culture. In this volume, award-winning cultural critic and controversial public intellectual Ilan Stavans focuses his attention on Jorge Luis Borgess fascination with Jewish culture. Despite not being Jewish himself, Borges wrote essays, poems, and stories dealing with various aspects of Jewish history and culturefrom the Holocaust to Kabbalah and from Franz Kafka to the creation of the State of Israel. In periods when anti-Semitism in Argentina was on the rise, Borges was clear in his refutation of such xenophobia, and when Jewish writers were hardly available in Spanish, he was among the first to translate them. Throughout Stavanss discussion of these topics he weaves in personal anecdotes on reading Borges for the first time, hearing him read in Mexico, and looking for him in Buenos Aires. No fan of Borgess classic oeuvre will ever see his legacy in the same way after reading this book. At long last, our magisterial Jorge Luis Borges is given his full due as Jewish creator. With a prose that sings, Stavans invites us on a spectacular intellectual odyssey into the mind of Borges as honorary Jewas outsider whose poetry, prose, and philosophical mediation has swept so many of us to the very edges of reason, the self, culture, and the world. Frederick Luis Aldama, author of Why the Humanities Matter: A Commonsense Approach This deeply personal, playful, and unexpected meditation on the Jewishness of Jorge Luis Borges illuminates not just Borgess Jewish sensibilities but also Ilan Stavanss somewhat contrary approach to his own Jewishness. It is also an affectionate love letter to a literary lion whose love for Jewish ideas, literature, and culture was not always returned. Imagining Borges as the luminary writer imagined himself opens a wonderful new window onto Borgess rich and beautiful soul. Can a non-Jewish writer like Borges write Jewish literature? In this case, as Stavans suggests so convincingly, the answer is a resounding, Si! James E. Young, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438461437
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Book Description
Explores Borgess infatuation with Jewish history and culture. In this volume, award-winning cultural critic and controversial public intellectual Ilan Stavans focuses his attention on Jorge Luis Borgess fascination with Jewish culture. Despite not being Jewish himself, Borges wrote essays, poems, and stories dealing with various aspects of Jewish history and culturefrom the Holocaust to Kabbalah and from Franz Kafka to the creation of the State of Israel. In periods when anti-Semitism in Argentina was on the rise, Borges was clear in his refutation of such xenophobia, and when Jewish writers were hardly available in Spanish, he was among the first to translate them. Throughout Stavanss discussion of these topics he weaves in personal anecdotes on reading Borges for the first time, hearing him read in Mexico, and looking for him in Buenos Aires. No fan of Borgess classic oeuvre will ever see his legacy in the same way after reading this book. At long last, our magisterial Jorge Luis Borges is given his full due as Jewish creator. With a prose that sings, Stavans invites us on a spectacular intellectual odyssey into the mind of Borges as honorary Jewas outsider whose poetry, prose, and philosophical mediation has swept so many of us to the very edges of reason, the self, culture, and the world. Frederick Luis Aldama, author of Why the Humanities Matter: A Commonsense Approach This deeply personal, playful, and unexpected meditation on the Jewishness of Jorge Luis Borges illuminates not just Borgess Jewish sensibilities but also Ilan Stavanss somewhat contrary approach to his own Jewishness. It is also an affectionate love letter to a literary lion whose love for Jewish ideas, literature, and culture was not always returned. Imagining Borges as the luminary writer imagined himself opens a wonderful new window onto Borgess rich and beautiful soul. Can a non-Jewish writer like Borges write Jewish literature? In this case, as Stavans suggests so convincingly, the answer is a resounding, Si! James E. Young, University of Massachusetts Amherst
A Critic's Journey
Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472033824
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
Ilan Stavans has been a lightning rod for cultural discussion and criticism his entire career. In A Critic's Journey, he takes on his own Jewish and Hispanic upbringing with an autobiographical focus and his typical flair with words, exploring the relationship between the two cultures from his own and also from others' experiences. Stavans has been hailed as a voice for Latino culture thanks to his Hispanic upbringing, but as a Jew and a Caucasian, he's also an outsider to that culture-something that's sharpened his perspective (and some of his critics' swords). In this book of essays, he looks at the creative process from that point of view, exploring everything from the translation of Don Quixote to Hispanic anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Latin America. Book jacket.
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472033824
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
Ilan Stavans has been a lightning rod for cultural discussion and criticism his entire career. In A Critic's Journey, he takes on his own Jewish and Hispanic upbringing with an autobiographical focus and his typical flair with words, exploring the relationship between the two cultures from his own and also from others' experiences. Stavans has been hailed as a voice for Latino culture thanks to his Hispanic upbringing, but as a Jew and a Caucasian, he's also an outsider to that culture-something that's sharpened his perspective (and some of his critics' swords). In this book of essays, he looks at the creative process from that point of view, exploring everything from the translation of Don Quixote to Hispanic anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Latin America. Book jacket.
The Restless Ilan Stavans
Author: Steven G. Kellman
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822986841
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Book Description
This is the first book-length study of one of the most prominent and prolific Latino academics, Ilan Stavans. He has written extensively on Latino culture, Jewish culture, dictionaries, immigration, language, Spanglish, soccer, translation, travel, selfies, and God. The Restless Ilan Stavans surveys his interests, achievements, and flaws while he is still in the midst of an extraordinarily productive career. A native of Mexico who became a U.S. citizen, he is an outsider to both the Chicano community that often resents him as an interloper and the American Jewish community that he, who grew up speaking Yiddish in Mexico City, often chides. The book examines his unlikely rise to prominence within the context of the spread of multiculturalism as a seminal principle within American culture. A self-proclaimed cosmopolitan who rejects borders, Stavans is both insider and outsider to the myriad of subjects he approaches.
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822986841
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Book Description
This is the first book-length study of one of the most prominent and prolific Latino academics, Ilan Stavans. He has written extensively on Latino culture, Jewish culture, dictionaries, immigration, language, Spanglish, soccer, translation, travel, selfies, and God. The Restless Ilan Stavans surveys his interests, achievements, and flaws while he is still in the midst of an extraordinarily productive career. A native of Mexico who became a U.S. citizen, he is an outsider to both the Chicano community that often resents him as an interloper and the American Jewish community that he, who grew up speaking Yiddish in Mexico City, often chides. The book examines his unlikely rise to prominence within the context of the spread of multiculturalism as a seminal principle within American culture. A self-proclaimed cosmopolitan who rejects borders, Stavans is both insider and outsider to the myriad of subjects he approaches.