A_ ANMTS he KINDERGARTEN page 39 Perfeci. Seff At Lawrence Allan Jewelers This watch has stunning pearlized dial with black border and an intricate chain bracelet in brushed and polished gold tones. It is water resistant and features the day and date. He will love it as a gift. An enduring classic makes a timeless gift. With a black snakeskin strap and a golden case, this handsome watch is also available with a rose gold-tone case and dial for both men and women. ) alliteite ! Fine Jewelers L Est. 1919 ,S" i /ire 1 91 9 30400 Telegraph Rd. Suite 134, Bingham Farms • 642-5575 THE ROOTS SUMMER SALE Save 20 -50% ON EVERYTHING IN THE STORE 444 Roots 44 Chata a block away and gave her "siete punalaci2s en el mero corazon" (seven knife stabs in the very heart). I accepted Clara's story on faith, not at all concerned that her description matched word for word the ti- tle of a popular song. The full import of Chata's death did not dawn on me un- til the following day, when I was taken to school by her older sis- ter, Elvira, whose braids were neither as long nor as glossy as Chata's, and whose skirts did not smell half as good. In the days that followed, Chata's violent death and Ar- turo's hard questions got mixed together in my dreams, and my apprehension grew that Chata had been murdered because of me, and because I was a Jew. Unlike her younger sister, Perpetual Outsider SEIKO Ii ril/id When I asked Father in the One afternoon, Chata failed evening, he said the Romans to pick me up at school. That did it and that was that. morning, Ramiro had followed Several days passed, and Ar- us to school, as usual, although turo did not mention the Jews they had quarreled in the park and Christ. I dared hope the the day before when he caught whole subject had been forgot- her flirting with a young chauf- ten. In the meantime, my feur. friendship with Michel grew. "He's following us. Don't turn He let me call him "Coco," around," I recall Chata saying. which was his nickname, be- They were the last words of cause his head was round and Chata's I would ever hear. hard like a coconut. Coco was It had grown dark and my as much a foreigner in the knees were cold when Father school as I was. He was Protes- finally came for me, after clos- tant, and the bigger boys ing the store. mocked his French accent and "Chata has gone away," was played catch with his cap. all he would say. Grace Samayoa was a little After dinner, I went into the shy of me, but now and again, kitchen and wormed the truth she gave me an approving smile out of Clara, the cook. She said when I answered Miss Hale's Chata and I had been followed questions correctly — and once by Ramiro. After she deposited she let me stroke her hair. me at the school, he waylaid 1Vatches not included. Sale prices on in-stock items (mly. 138 West Maple • 810-647-6687 atin American Jews have a sense of Diaspora that's far more palpable than that of Jews living in the United States. It's even more pronounced for Latin American Jewish writers, who have little hope of gaining in their homelands the broad acceptance achieved in the United Sates by such writers as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. One of the choices open to Jewish writers in Latin America is to remain in the cultural --- and literary -- fringe that generally reflects the con dition of Jews in Latin America. But by doing this they abandon any hope of wider readership. Oth- er choices are to assimilate into gentile society or to emigrate, usually to the U.S., Is- rael or Europe. Ilan Stavans, editor of Tropical Syn- agogues: Short Stories By Jewish- Latin American Writers (which includes Victor Perera's short story "Kindergarten" ), chose the latter. Born in Mexico of parents whose families had left Russia and Poland (his father was Mexico's first Yiddish actor) in the early 20th century, Mr. Stavans teach- es literature and Hispanic culture at Amherst College in western Massa chusetts. He came here in 1985, he said after concluding that he had no chance to succeed as a "Jewish writer" in Mexico. Once here, Mr. Stavans, 33, married an Amer- ican Jewish woman, sent his son to a Jewish school and joined a synagogue. Still, he thinks of himself as an outsider, even in relation to U.S. Jewish life. It's a condition he attributes to "the psychology of the immigrant' so instilled in Latin American Jews. This sense of being the perpetual outsider is evident in the 23 short stories in Tropical Syna- gogues, the first anthology of Latin American writ- ers published in English. Recurrent themes in the stories are assimilation, the struggle to maintain tradition, social and political anti-Semitism, and mysticism. Although some authors in Tropical Synagogues write in English, most are unknown to English- speaking readers. The best-known are the late Alberto Gerchunoff (The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas") and the satirist Moacyr Scliar ("The Centaur in the Garden"). But not all the authors in Tropical Synagogues are Jews. The collection includes three stories by the late, celebrated Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, who may have descended from marranos on his moth- ers side, and who often included Jewish charac- ters and mystical refer- ences in his work. =-8 "I wanted to show that at least something of the Jew has been absorbed c), into the gentile Latin °- American psyche," Mr. Stavans said of his decision to include Mr. Borges' stories. Tropical Synagogues also includes a long in- troduction that covers the history of Latin Amer- ican Jewish literature, from the late 19th century to today. And the future? Mr. Stavans believes that Latin American Jew- ish fiction is about to gain wider acceptance. — Ira Rifkin