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Title: On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language by Ilan Stavans ISBN: 0-14-200094-9 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 30 July, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: ¡Gracias Ilán! A groisen Donk! Thanks Ilan!
Comment: As an American Jew with insider knowledge of the Mexico City Jewish community, I was startled and later heartwarmed by this book, and in the end proud of Stavans' courageous autobiographical outpouring. He has expressed facts about the Mexico City Jewish community and its effect on how one grows up there and how one views the world from this shtetl within one of the largest cities in the world.
I am enormously proud of how he has expressed himself in a language still somewhat foreign to him. He has given the reader some food for thought on how we all sometimes live on immigrant islands trying so ferociously to protect our languages and cultures while our offspring yearn to find a meaning in the country of their birth.
I suppose I'm a bit prejudiced since there are family ties here, but this book is outstanding and worth your reading. It definitely deals with the great questions of the humanities. His "let it all hang out" style must have cost him dearly amongst the family and the community, but as a writer he is definitely true to himself. I admire him greatly. This is a must read.
Rating: 4
Summary: A prototype intellectual memior
Comment: Ilan Stavans' On Borrowed Words flows nicely. It is at once an autobiograpical account of Stavans' intellectual journey, a rich detail on the literary works that have shaped his worldview, and a commentary on the influence, power, and limitations of language. The reader will develop a greater awareness of the books and influences that form one's belief system after reading Stavans' memior.
Credit Stavans for not unnecessarily dwelling on his past as a minority, but for developing (though his detail of language in his life) his own persona.
Rating: 4
Summary: a memoir - language and marginality
Comment: This book is a well-written, fascinating memoir of a childhood and young adulthood of a Jewish childhood in Mexico city. The characters are memorable - Bobbe Bela from Russia, the actor father, the talented and unstable brother, and the author himself seeking home and identity. A significant component of his seeking identity is found in language - Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, English. He compares multiple languages with masks of an actor, one of many elements in his tale that cause the reader to reflect. Another component is the author's finding his calling as an author - the influences (and absence of encouragement) that shape his writing, the language and the content. Another component is his searching for his Jewishness - in Israel, in Spain, in theology books (and classes), in Yiddish literature.
This memoir is excellent reading on being human - the reader gains insight into human experience as a whole through the detailed exposition of what it means to be a specific human, Ilan Stavans.
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Title: Spanglish : The Making of a New American Language by Ilan Stavans ISBN: 0060087757 Publisher: RAYO Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language by Eva Hoffman ISBN: 0140127739 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories by Ilan Stavans ISBN: 0195110196 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: December, 1998 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America by Ed Morales ISBN: 0312262329 Publisher: LA Weekly Books Pub. Date: 20 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Cross and the Scroll: A Jewish-Hispanic Reader by Ilan Stavans ISBN: 0415929318 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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