Jewish writers of Latin America : a dictionary /

This pioneering work organizes a large literary area little known to North American readers. Lockhart includes some 120 entries on authors from ten countries. The majority are from Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil, reflecting the concentration of Latin America's Jewish population. Fifty scholars contributed the signed entries. The approaches vary considerably, but each entry begins with a biographical sketch and a general summary of the author's works. A typical entry is about five pages long, concluding with both primary and secondary bibliographies. All Spanish and Portuguese quotations and titles are translated into English. The focus is on writers who reflect a Jewish identity in their works--that is, writers who deal significantly with such concerns as assimilation, immigration; the Sephardic, Yiddish, and Ashkenazic heritages; antisemitism; the Holocaust; Zionism and Israel. In an introduction afflicted somewhat by postmodernist vocabulary, the editor gives an overview that sets the writers in historical/sociological context and establishes his view of their relative importance. The introduction concludes with a useful general bibliography, which reveals how inadequate the scholarship in English has been. Good index of names and titles. Recommended for all large Latin American and Jewish literature collections. D. S. Gochberg; Michigan State University