Introduction: The language of paradise -- Unstable affiliations -- Why Misha left -- Emancipation and emigration -- Their First America -- Lisa Noemí Milstein -- The amauta -- Jewish Americanism -- Expulsion -- Adulthood -- Genocide -- The national disease -- Family life -- The need for a new world -- The limits of adaptation -- The limits of translation -- Dialectic of silence -- Israel -- Larissa and Cinna -- Return to Colombia -- Marginal survival -- My nationality -- God's face -- Geology of Machu Picchu -- Sina and Cinna -- Sina Aronsfrau -- What's in a name? -- The Aronsfrau murder -- Envy -- Poor Cinna -- Author of my days -- Bigger smaller -- Mesohippus -- Rainbow scarab.
Summary:
"A riveting exploration of the intersecting lines of Jewish and indigenous Latin American thought and culture, by way of a family memoir. In Our America, eminent anthropologist and historian Claudio Lomnitz traces his grandparents' exile from Eastern Europe to South America. At the same time, the book is a pretext to explain and analyze the worldview, culture, and spirit of countries such as Peru, Colombia, and Chile, from the perspective of educated Jewish emigrants imbued with the hope and determination typical of those who escaped Europe in 1920s. Lomnitz's grandparents, who were both trained to defy ghetto life with the pioneering spirit of the early Zionist movement, became intensely involved in the Peruvian leftist intellectual milieu and its practice of connecting Peru's indigenous past to an emancipatory internationalism that included Jewish culture and thought. After being thrown into prison supposedly for their socialist leanings, Lomnitz's grandparents were exiled to Colombia, where they were subject to its scandals, its class system, its political life. Through this lens, Lomnitz explores the almost negligible attention and esteem that South America holds in US public opinion. The story then continues to Chile during World War II, Israel in the 1950s, and finally to Claudio's youth, living with his parents in Berkeley, California, and Mexico City. Writing in a vivid, engaging style, Lomnitz creates an intellectual space that transcends the family memoir genre, where the exploration of one past, origin, and culture is placed in a dialectical relationship with the background of a renowned anthropologist specializing in Latin American history and culture"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.