Naomi Lindstrom
Among recent studies of Latin American Jewish writing, Debora Cordeiro-Rosa’s Trauma, Memory and Identity in Five Jewish Novels from the Southern Cone especially stands out for its emphasis on works set in the early decades of the twentieth century, when South American Jewish communities were full of freshly arrived immigrants still trying to absorb the shock of persecution, displacement, and immigration while resourcefully adapting their Jewish identities to life in the New World. Cordeiro-Rosa explores the cultural production of the scarcely-known Jewish community of Paraguay along with writing from such established centers of Jewish life as Buenos Aires. The study offers both a general informative overview of Latin American Jewish social and cultural history and literature and detailed analyses of five novels chosen to represent the countries of the Southern Cone of South America.
Ariana Huberman
In Trauma, Memory and Identity in Five Jewish Novels from the Southern Cone, Debora Cordeiro Rosa eloquently analyzes crucial aspects of the main historical stages of Jewish identity construction in Latin America. She discusses five well-chosen novels by Teresa Porzecanski (Uruguay), Sonia Guralnik (Chile), Susana Gertopan (Paraguay), Francisco Dzialovsky (Brazil), and Marcelo Birmajer (Argentina) who depict three generations of immigrants from the 1920’s to the 1990’s. These immigrants struggle with the desire, resistance and difficulty to leave behind trauma and memory in the process of identity negotiation. This book takes the challenge and succeeds in spelling out the personal struggles of Jewish immigrants with their new 'foreign' status. It does an excellent job of explaining key aspects of the immigrant’s experience as they are portrayed in Latin American literature. It delves into the history of immigration to the Southern Cone and Brazil, it questions what it means to be a Jew, the concept of Home, the importance of language in group identity, and the problems of assimilation and acculturation, among other issues. Trauma, Memory and Identity is a must-read book for students and scholars who are interested in Immigration, Identity and Diaspora in Latin America.