A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile (The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.50 (692 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1558611762 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 224 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-08-27 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Agosín's memoir is a moving testament to endurance and to the power of memory and of words.. "I wish to talk about my life in an unseemly and noisy house in southern Chile and about a town with fifty Nazis and three Jewish families"In this unique memoir, Marjorie Agosín writes in the voice of her mother, Frida, who grew up as the daughter of European Jewish immigrants in Chile in the World War II era. Woven into the narrative are the stories of Frida's father, who had to leave Vienna in 1920 because he fell in love with a Christian cabaret dancer; of her paternal grandmother, who arrived in Chile later with a number tattoed on her arm; and of her great grandmother from Odessa, who loved the Spanish language so much that she repeated its harmonious sounds even in her sleep
Finally, she rediscovers herself in the secret democracies of books and language, finding through writing in both English and Spanish the power to re-create what politics and exile have stripped from her. Her childhood seems to pass in an alternation between a lushly idyllic genteel poverty and the hard anti-Semitism endemic among citizens of a country that covertly supported the Third Reich. Though clearly rooted in Latin American veins of magic realism, particularly Neruda, her formidible prose also evokes contemporary detail-oriented fantasists like Grace Paley and Stuart Dybek. All rights reserved.. Throughout, Agosin's language returns to explorations of color, natural bounty, and minute recollections of lost foods, environs, stimuli, and ritual. From Kirkus Reviews Human-rights activist Agosin (Spanish/Wellesley Coll.; Always from Somewhere Else, 1998,
"Beautiful prose" according to Cecilia R. Milanes. Agosín is one of our most important poets of the late 20th and early 21st century. This, my favorite and the first in her trilogy of memoirs, is based on her mother's life; it includes photos and a sensitive glimpse into the life of a young Jewish girl/woman living in Chile after WW. The Independent Reviews Site A Customer Poets seem to have a knack with memoir. There's alreadysomething very baring about much contemporary poetry that is similarto what many memorably brave and direct memoirs possess. There's also something even more immediate about translation. Works translatedinto English often have a stunni. A Cross and a Star by Agosin Marielina Figueroa The book speaks about survival and how trauma affects your memory for the rest of your life. It is also about family love and hope. It is beautifully written.