NON-FICTION
`Sephardic American
Voices: Two Hundred Years
of Literary Legacy'
The JIV guide to
summer's best books.
JUDITH BOLTON-FASMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
6
n d woman
ap in t.. was not totally lost. I did come from a reading family.
ou a. nr ge l like de es a cbrl ii be
Like a picture that has hung forever in a house, an im-
paint-
to
ing." That was the way Pro- age of my mother comes back to me. She is studying for a
fessor K said I explored
master's degree in Spanish literature, while stirring a pot
James Joyce's Ulysses. Over
of something lumpy and holding my younger brother in
the years my anger has sub-
her other arm. The book holder that never propped up a
sided enough to recognize some truth in his rebuke. I was
cookbook comes into view. That was the way my mother
halfway through college and he was the first person to tell
read the novels of Cervantes, Unamuno and Pio Baroja in
me that I had not yet articulated my own vision of litera-
the kitchen.
ture.
The topic that got me into trouble with Pro-
And then there was my father, a long-distance reader,
whose tastes and habits were idiosyncratic. At the
fessor K was an exegesis that I patched together
end of each day he cleared space in his cluttered
(none of it original) on "The Oxen of the Sun,"
life and in our cluttered living room to read. He
the 14th chapter of Ulysses. Surely he had to
always sat on the far corner of the sofa, usual-
be impressed that I observed (and somewhat
ly with a heavy book on his lap. He was all fo-
assimilated) Joyce parodying various periods
cus. A single concentrated light from a lamp might
illuminate a page of Michener or Bellow or Wouk.
of English literature. Surely he would marvel
U3
w
z
Reading is destiny. The inventions and revelations
over the fact that I knew precisely who was being
parodied. I found a guidebook of sorts on the subject, one
of that destiny extend from the very words on a page onto;
that was far more extensive than the Cliff Notes everyone
the canvas of our lives. For me and almost certainly for
else was reading — a Cliff Notes par excellence.
those of you who have read this far, reading is a way of life
C/3
w
0
However, what I thought passed for insight was really
— the fundamental way we discern our destiny. My over-
LU
just stumbling into the midst of Joyce's ingenious trans-
due thanks go to Professor K and to my parents for help-
LU
formation of language. There I was, like a blind woman
ing me to recognize that.
CC
with newly acquired sight, and no prior reference to rec-
58
ognize what was being revealed or even invented. But I
Who deserves your thanks? Which pictures hang in your
mind?
Edited by Diana Mat=
Brandeis University Press, 363 pgs.,
$24.95.
ephardic Jews have spoken aver-
sion of Ladino, a mixture of 15th-
century Spanish and Hebrew, for
more than 500 years. Because of .
that, too often there has been an "wit&
them" attitude between Sephardim and
Ashkenazim. "How can you be really Jew-
ish if you don't speak Yiddish?" goes the
derisive refrain.
Sephardic American Voices is a strong,
intelligent comeback. It is a weighty tome
best sampled rather than read straight
through -- a standout in a literature that
is deeply influenced by the experience of
Eastern European Jewry.
As with most anthologies, the literary ,
quality here is uneven. But Diana Matza,
a professor of literature at Utica College
in New York, has included a number of
wonderful if forgotten voices. Starting
from Revolutionary times, they come to-
gether in a diverse representation of the
Sephardic-American experience. In her
informative introduction, Ms. Matza
notes that "Much Sephardic literature
emphasizes the home more than the
street ... with portraits of interiors — of
people, of their domestic settings — dom-
inating outside the geography."
Early selections, important for the his-
torical record, indicate the long, endur-
ing presence of Sephardic Jews in this
country. However, contemporary entries
fare better under critical scrutiny. Vic-
tor Perera's memoir "The I.Q. and I: My
Adventures Near the Bottom of the Bell
Curve" is a standout. Mr. Perera, e
Guatemalan Jew who has written.twc
other acclaimed memoirs, about hit
-Sephardic family, remembers hit
mishaps as an immigrant teen ager it
New York. Jack Marshall, whose wort
was nominated for a National Book Crit
ics Circle Award, remembers his Syri
an- Jewish parents in two poignan
,
poems.
While Yiddish is lovingly .preservec
and archived, Ladino is becoming extinct
The anthropologist and poet Ruth Beha
movingly commemorates this rich ani
dying version of Spanish as the "Spaniel
of courtyards ripe with pomegranate
... Spanish of.those told to go and neve
turn back."
My mother's family has spoken Lad
no for more than 500 years. Although till
ends with my generation, this antholog
demonstrates that Sephardic preserve
tion translates into many languages.
— Judith Bolton-Fasma