Taking Root: Narratives of Jewish Women in Latin America

by Marjorie Agosin, Marjorie Agosín

Overview

In Taking Root, Latin American women of Jewish descent, from Mexico to Uruguay, recall their coming of age with Sabbath candles and Hebrew prayers, Ladino songs and merengue music, Queen Esther and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Rich and poor, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, Jewish immigrant families searched for a new home and identity in predominantly Catholic societies. The essays included here examine the religious, economic, social, and political choices these families have made and continue to make as they forge Jewish identities in the New World.

Marjorie Agosín has gathered narratives and testimonies that reveal the immense diversity of Latin American Jewish experience. These essays, based on first- and second-generation immigrant experience, describe differing points of view and levels of involvement in Jewish tradition. In Taking Root, Agosín presents us with a contemporary and vivid account of the Jewish experience in Latin America.

Taking Root documents the sadness of exile and loss but also a fierce determination to maintain Jewish traditions. This is Jewish history but it is also part of the untold history of Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, and all of Latin America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780896802261
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	09/30/2002
Series:	Ohio RIS Latin America Series , #38
Edition description:	1
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Marjorie Agosín is the author of A Map of Hope and The Alphabet in My Hands and the editor of Taking Root: Narratives of Jewish Women in Latin America. She is a member of the Spanish Academy of Letters and winner of the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor. She is a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College.

Editorial Reviews

"A very significant addition to the fields of Judaic Studies and Women's Studies...this book makes a unique contribution to literary scholars interested in the Jewish presence in Latin America and in the literature of displacement in general." --Isabel Alvarez Borland, College of the Holy Cross

From the Publisher