Abstract Title: Homelands in Exile: Three Contemporary Latin American Jewish Women Embody the Written Word Laura Suzanne Wein

Abstract Title: Homelands in Exile: Three Contemporary Latin American Jewish Women Embody the Written Word Laura Suzanne Weingarten, Doctor of Philosphy, 2004 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Saúl Sosnowski, Director of Global Programs Margo Glantz, Nora Glickman, and Ruth Behar are three contemporary Latin American Jewish women writers who have succeeded in creating a literary homeland in the absence of a satisfactory geographic one. They have created an imaginary realm where their cultural, religious and ethnic diversity has flourished. Glantz, Glickman, and Behar have redefined Diaspora/diaspora, escaped a seemingly fated cultural and geographic exile, and established unique identities through the act of writing. Homelands in Exile: Three Contemporary Latin American Jewish Women Writers Create a Literary Homeland By Laura Suzanne Weingarten 2004 Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 2004 Advisory Committee: Dr. Saúl Sosnowski, Chair Dr. Sandra Cypess-Messinger Dr. Regina Igel Dr. Phyllis Peres Dr. Marsha Rozenblit © Copyright by Laura Suzanne Weingarten 2004 ii Table of Contents Introduction..........................................1 A Theoretical Framework..............................20 Chapter 1: Margo Glantz: An Identity Conceived in the Word ...................49 Chapter 2: Nora Glickman: Theatrical Self-Consciousness.......................130 Chapter 3: Ruth Behar: The Juban Configuration.............................289 Conclusion..........................................370 Bibliography........................................386 1 Introduction This study will examine selected works by Margo Glantz (b. 1930 Mexico City, Mexico), Nora Glickman (b. La Pampa, Argentina 1944), and Ruth Behar (b.1956 Havana, Cuba), in order to demonstrate how these writers have individually succeeded in establishing a literary homeland in place of the geographic one which they all lack. This homeland, created with words, becomes the space in which each writer is free to explore her multiple identities without the societal or canonical demands of embracing a single nation- ality, religion, language, culture, or literary style. The borderless territories of these imagined homelands are made up of plays, novels, short stories, autobiographical works, essays, and poems. This diversity of literary expression provides the writers with the flexibility and freedom to utilize the most effective means to communicate their idea, express their creativity and share their lives with their readers. Through their effective and candid self-exposure, these writers ultimately establish a “post-exilic discourse” and can invite their readers to visit their literary homelands. 2 It is clear that the impetus towards this discourse of diaspora arises in response to the seemingly inescapable condition of being de-territorialized culturally and geo- graphically. The act of writing oneself into existence, or, according to the Jewish Rabbinical concept, inscribing oneself in the Book of Life, through their respective texts, serves as these writers’ proof of citizenship in their self-made homelands. Through the power of their creative imagination, they have miraculously managed to put an end to their state of exile. Glantz, Glickman, and Behar are not distinctive for being the first Latin American Jewish women writers to recognize and express their hybrid identities as Jews and women inhabiting multiple cultural and geographic spaces; but they are unique for the exceptionally creative ways that they develop and elaborate these themes in their work. All three writers address their sense of dislocation from a stable and concrete geographic space or specific nation (a form of perpetual exile), their personal and familial “transculturación”1, and their mechanisms for coping with the ongoing processes of assimilation, integration, and identity reconfiguration. Through their vividly imagined 1 Transculturación, as coined by Fernando Ortíz, will be fully defined and applied further on in the text. 3 literary homelands, they reveal critical components of the identity and literary works of contemporary Latin American Jewish women writers. Glantz, Glickman, and Behar explore and express the intermingling and, at times, conflicting cultural, religious, and national affinities in their texts, bringing critical and original manifestations of the Latin American Jewish woman’s identity to the literary forefront. While Glantz, Glickman, and Behar may be only three Latin American Jewish women writers and academics among many, the connections between them are noteworthy, as well as how they contribute to the foundation of an alternative discourse by cross-cultural women writers. To begin with, they are representative of the evolution of Latin American Jewish women’s writing throughout the generations. Glantz, born in Mexico City in 1930, reflects the impact immigration and integration had upon her and her family at a time in Mexican history when the Cristero Movement2 was launching attacks on Jews and suspected communists. Glantz’s writing 2 The Cristero Movement occurred in Mexico in the 1920s and was a resurgence of pro-Catholic dogma, at a time when support for the Catholic Church had waned. There were waves of anti-Communist and anti-Semitic attacks throughout the country, in response to the potential threats to the Catholic Church. There was also a strong influence from the rising Nazi regime in Germany and the anti-Semitic campaigns across Western Europe. 4 is as much a reflection of the era in which she was born and lived as it is of her cross-cultural upbringing in a Jewish home, a Catholic country, a society tinged with indigenous culture, and her loose ties to the life her parents left behind in Russia. Born in 1944 in La Pampa, Argentina, Glickman chron- ologically follows Glantz. Like Glantz’s writing, Glick- man’s plays reflect her life as the child of immigrants in Argentina, as well as her own experiences as a transcultur- ated individual in Argentina and the United States. Born at the end of World War II and the Holocaust, Glickman was acutely aware of the persecution of Jews in Europe and the potential dangers of being Jewish in the Diaspora. Her writing reflects the lives of immigrants that have been marked by historical hardships and persecutions, and the inheritance of a diasporic consciousness that spans the generations. Behar, born just twelve years after Glickman in Havana, Cuba in 1956, completes the generational link between the three writers. Behar is also an heir to the immigrant consciousness as a result of being born to parents who had immigrated from Eastern and Western Europe to Cuba, and she attests to the impact the immigrant and exile experiences have made upon her life and writing. 5 Just as Glantz and Glickman’s identities were impacted by the political and social upheaval during their childhoods, Behar was born on the eve of Castro’s rise to power and the political, social, and financial restructuring of the country. The diversity of the Cuban population, Behar’s own cultural hybridity, and her immigration to the United States in 1961 due to Cuba’s political instability, all play a significant role in the ways in which Behar conveys her mixed cultural background through her writing. The similarities and commonalities between Glantz, Glickman, and Behar can be found in their sense of physical, cultural, and psychological exile from their various homelands. These include their use of literature as a means to reconfigure their identities and recover their homelands, and their welding of various literary styles and genres to communicate themselves through the written word. The fact that Glantz, Glickman, and Behar have different nationalities and places of birth is a factor that warrants discussion. Beginning with Margo Glantz, I will primarily address her autobiographical work, Las genealogías (1982), which began as chronicles of her life and her parents’ lives, and later became a complete work. It is exemplary of her diverse cultural and religious affinities and her unique 6 form of literary expression, and although the work easily falls into the category of autobiography, she incorporates elements of narrative, collective memory and interview techniques, which ultimately place Las genealogías in a category of its own. Glantz simultaneously serves as the narrator of her own life and the chronicler of her family history. She acts as the primary and secondary agent in the recuperation of personal and family memories, tradi- tions, and experiences in order to reconstruct and communicate her identity in a Spanish-speaking and predominantly Catholic world that fails to reflect her diversity. Her memoirs not only speak to her own experiences, but repre- sent a strong collective voice of Latin American Jewish immigrants as well. Glantz further explores her Jewish identity in a more global context in No pronunciarás, in which she examines the nature of nomenclature and the inherent biblical qual- ity of her work. Glantz illuminates the cultural deriva- tions of words and demonstrates that their utilization provides further proof of a culture’s presence and endurance. There is a clear connection between Glantz’s examination of the complex and multi-layered nature of words in No pronun- ciarás and the anecdotes she weaves into Las genealogías. 7 Nora Glickman also employs multiple writing styles to

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