 |
|
Sergio Waisman
Leaving is a literary novel that traces the story of
three migrations: a Jewish family's move from Poland to Argentina
(between the two World Wars); part of that family's exit from
Argentina to the United States (during the political upheavals
of the 1970s); and the contemporary travels of the protagonist
(the inheritor of all previous migrations) and his American girlfriend
(and later fiancée) in the United States. The family memories
take the reader to Buenos Aires, to the voyage from Poland to
the Americas, to New York, Paris, Champaign/Urbana, Providence,
Boulder, San Diego and San Francisco, among other places. In
the process, Leaving explores what it means to be Jewish
Latin American (Argentine, in this case), as well as what happened
to that mixed heritage once it is exiled from South America in
the U.S. Latin American identity takes on specific aspects in this
novel. With respect not only to Argentine culture, but also to
the manifestations and memories of that Jewish Argentine culture
once the main character in the novel have to leave Argentina
and move to the United States after the military coup of 1976.
In addition, the novel's very style and structure (an experimental,
fragmented collection of interconnected narratives) seeks to
mirror the difficulty in recounting and understanding past events,
especially as they are distorted by conflicting versions of history
and the uncertainty of memory itself, as well as by the changes
in languages associated with each migration, with each "leaving." "Excellent first novel. Sergio Waisman knows how to follow the traces that Borges leaves for us. He recounts his relationship with his two languages and his two cultures as if they formed part of a family novel." Ricardo Piglia (author of Respiración artificial, La ciudad ausente and Plata quemada) Read other reviews: everba Sergio Waisman was born in New York to Argentine parents in
1967. He spoke Spanish-and even some pre-school French-before
he spoke English. He is currently Assistant Professor of Spanish
at The George Washington University. He received his PhD from
UC Berkeley in 2000, and an MA in Creative Writing from CU Boulder
in 1995. His translation of The Absent City (Duke Univ.
Press) by Ricardo Piglia received an NEA Translation Fellowship
Award in 2000. Read more about the author at: |
===================..........====
.....................................................
-
------