Ilan Stavans
Encyclopedia
Ilan Stavans is a Mexican-American
, essayist, lexicographer, cultural commentator, translator, short-story author, TV personality, and teacher
known for his insights into American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures.
to a middle-class Jewish family from the Pale of Settlement
, his father Abraham was a popular Mexican soap opera star. Living in Europe
, Latin America
, and the Middle East
, he ultimately immigrated to the United States
in 1985. Upon completing his graduate education in New York City
, he settled in New England
where he lives with his wife, Alison, and his two sons, Joshua and Isaiah. His journey is the topic of his autobiography
On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (2001). He received a Master’s degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary
and a Doctorate in Letters from Columbia University
. He was the host of the syndicated PBS
show Conversations with Ilan Stavans, which ran from 2001 to 2006.
He is best known for his investigations on language and culture. His love for lexicography
is evident in Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion (2005).
Stavans's work is wide-ranging, and includes both scholarly monographs such as The Hispanic Condition (1995) and comic strips in the case of Latino USA: A Cartoon History (with Lalo Alcaraz
) (2000). Stavans is editor of several anthologies including The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998). A selection of his work appeared in 2000 under the title The Essential Ilan Stavans. In 2004, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Pablo Neruda
’s birth, Stavans edited the 1,000-page-long The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. The same year he edited the 3-volume set of Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories for the Library of America
.
He has also displayed a strong interest in popular culture. Among other topics, he has written influential essays on the Mexican comedian, Mario Moreno ("Cantinflas
")," the lampooner José Guadalupe Posada
, the Chicano
leader César Chávez
, and the Tejana
singer Selena
, as well as a book about the board game Lotería! (with Teresa Villegas), which includes Stavans’s own poems. He was also featured in one of the Smithsonian Q&A books.
Since 1993 he has been on the faculty at Amherst College
, Massachusetts, where he is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture. He is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common
, based at Amherst College
. He has also taught a various other institutions, including Columbia University
. In 1997, Stavans was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
and has been the recipient of international prizes and honors, including the Latino Literature Prize, Chile’s Presidential Medal, and the Rubén Darío Distinction.
and parochial. He has been a critic of the nostalgia generated by life in the Eastern European shtetl
of the 19th century. He is recognized for his explorations of Jewish culture in the Hispanic world. In 1994 he published the anthology Tropical Synagogues: Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers (1994). From 1997 to 2005 he edited the Jewish Latin America series at the University of New Mexico Press
. And his anthology The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature (2005) was the recipient of the National Jewish Book Award. Some of his essays on Jewish topics are included in The Inveterate Dreamer. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.
His inspirations range from Jorge Luis Borges
to Edmund Wilson
and Walter Benjamin
. (In his autobiography, Stavans recounts the episode, in the early stages of his career, when, in order to find his own style, he burned his collection of dozens of Borges’s books, p. 9.) He has written a small biography of the Chicano
lawyer Oscar "Zeta" Acosta
and a book-long meditation on Octavio Paz
. In 2005, in a series of interviews with Neal Sokol called Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations, Stavans traces his beginnings, calls Hispanic civilization to task for its allergy to constructive self-criticism, discusses the work of Borges, Franz Kafka
, Isaac Babel
, Sholem Aleichem, Gabriel García Márquez
, Isaac Bashevis Singer
, Octavio Paz
, Samuel Johnson
, Edward Said
, Miguel de Cervantes
, and others, and reflects on anti-Semitism
and anti-Hispanic sentiment
.
Stavans has devoted many years of study to the work of Gabriel García Márquez. His biography, Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years, slated for publication in 2010, is the first of two planned volumes. The biography traces Gabriel García Márquez's artistic development from childhood to the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish in 1967 and its English translation by Gregory Rabassa in 1970. Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, has called this biography "an engaging, informative study tracking the small beginnings of a literary giant and his magnum opus. It is also a love story: that of an important contemporary critic and thinker with a writer, his life, and his text. Stavans enlightens us, not just about one literary figure, but about the culture and history of a whole hemisphere in a book that never feels plodding or overtly academic. Stavans is a magical writer himself."
In A Critic’s Journey, published in 2009 by University of Michigan Press, Stavans writes about his life and work as a cultural critic. The book is a collection of pieces that brings together three cultures: Jewish, American, and Mexican. It includes pieces on writing On Borrowed Words, the Holocaust in Latin America, the growth of Latino studies in the U.S. academy, Stavans’ relationship with the Jewish Daily Forward, and translation in the shaping of Hispanic culture, as well as pieces on Sandra Cisneros, Richard Rodríguez, Isaiah Berlin, and W. G. Sebald, asnd close readings of the Don Quixote and the oeuvre of Roberto Bolaño.
Since the late 1990s, Stavans has devoted his energy to reinvigorating the literary genre of the conversation not as a promotional tool but as a patient, insightful instrument to explore them in intellectual depth. Neal Sokol interviewed Stavans in a book-long volume Eight Conversations (2004) on his Jewish and Latino heritage, translator Verónica Albin discussed the way the word “love” has changed through the age in the book Love and Language (2007) as well as on topic like libraries and censorship in Knowledge and Censorship (2008), and Canadian journalist Mordecai Drache (Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture) probes him on the Bible as a work of literature in With All Thine Heart (2010). In the U.S. Latino literary tradition, writers like Gloria Anzaldúa and Richard Rodriguez have also practiced the conversation as a meditative form.
called "My Mexican Shivah." The film was praised by Martin Tsai in the New York Sun ("Lifetimes To Go in Old Mexico." August 29, 2008). Mr. Tsai writes "My Mexican Shivah offers so much profundity that almost every viewer can walk out of the theater with something to mull...Mr. Springall and screenwriter Jorge Goldenberg
have so skillfully infused the film with an intriguing story, convincing performances, and a breezy pace that one nearly forgets that the action unfolds almost entirely within the confines of one house. The film's coda may be somewhat anticlimactic because the confrontations do not boil over as anticipated. But, like the rest of the film, it rings utterly true."
The themes in Stavans' fiction range from redemption and revenge to cultural authenticity and political activism. In "A Heaven Without Crows," he imagines Kafka's final letter to Max Brod
, suggesting that maybe he shouldn't burn his œuvre. "The One-Handed Pianist" deals with a rare disease affecting a piano concert player, impeding her the use of one hand. In "Xerox Man," written for the BBC
, about an Orthodox Jewish thief of rare books, Stavans meditates on imperfection. And in "The Disappearance," about the kidnapping of a famous Jewish stage actor in the Low Countries
, Stavans explores the perils of silence. "The Disappearance" serves as the basis of a play he created with the Double Edge Theater Company. The play's premiere was staged at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on October 16, 2008 (see Mike Boehm's article "Seeking Haven on Earth." Los Angeles Times October 15, 2008).
His graphic novel "Mr. Spic Goes to Washington" (2008) was hailed by the writer Rigoberto González as "Stavans' latest contribution to a stellar career in literary troublemaking." Mr. González states in the El Paso Times (Texas) "Unlike "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," the Jimmy Stewart vehicle that inspires the title and premise of this book (a film that, incidentally, did not thrill Congress back in 1939 because of its depiction of a corrupt and self-absorbed branch of government), "Mr. Spic" inhabits a grittier version of this fantasy story line: There really is no place for such a pro-Latino agitator like him in Washington. And so his political career is cut short, though Stavans assures us that the ideas, dreams and visions of a pioneer do not vanish with his martyrdom." ("What If You Voted for the Vato?" El Paso Times October 19, 2008) Elaine Ayala writes in the San Antonio Express-News ""Mr. Spic" delivers Latino history lessons with comedic bows not only to Mr. Smith but Cervantes' Don Quixote, Woody Allen's "Zelig," JFK conspiracy theories, even Bill Clinton...The 110-page book is a quick, entertaining read that will appeal to a wider and younger audience than has read Stavans before. Fans of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" will enjoy its comedic value and caustic satire." ("Idealistic Mr. Spic Shocks and Provokes." San Antonio Express-News July 27, 2008)
and language academies are buffers whose improbable function is to provide continuity for a language, but suggests that such continuity, especially in the age of electronic communication, is fatuous. He accuses the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language
in Madrid
of colonialism
, among other things. He has also studied the Iberian conquest of the Americas in the 16th century from a linguistic perspective. Translation
, for Stavans, represents appropriation
. He defined modernity
as “a translated way of life” and has written and lectured on the role translators perform as communicating vessels across epochs and habitats.
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, essayist, lexicographer, cultural commentator, translator, short-story author, TV personality, and teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
known for his insights into American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures.
Life
Ilan Stavans was born in MexicoMexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
to a middle-class Jewish family from the Pale of Settlement
Pale of Settlement
The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...
, his father Abraham was a popular Mexican soap opera star. Living in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, and the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, he ultimately immigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1985. Upon completing his graduate education in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, he settled in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
where he lives with his wife, Alison, and his two sons, Joshua and Isaiah. His journey is the topic of his autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (2001). He received a Master’s degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary
Jewish Theological Seminary of America
The Jewish Theological Seminary of America is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism, and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies.JTS operates five schools: Albert A...
and a Doctorate in Letters from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. He was the host of the syndicated PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
show Conversations with Ilan Stavans, which ran from 2001 to 2006.
He is best known for his investigations on language and culture. His love for lexicography
Lexicography
Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
is evident in Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion (2005).
Stavans's work is wide-ranging, and includes both scholarly monographs such as The Hispanic Condition (1995) and comic strips in the case of Latino USA: A Cartoon History (with Lalo Alcaraz
Lalo Alcaraz
Lalo Alcaraz is an Mexican-American cartoonist. He is most known for being the author of the comic La Cucaracha, the first nationally syndicated, politically themed Latino daily comic strip. Launched in 2002, La Cucaracha has become one of the most controversial in the history of American comic...
) (2000). Stavans is editor of several anthologies including The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998). A selection of his work appeared in 2000 under the title The Essential Ilan Stavans. In 2004, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
’s birth, Stavans edited the 1,000-page-long The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. The same year he edited the 3-volume set of Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories for the Library of America
Library of America
The Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
.
He has also displayed a strong interest in popular culture. Among other topics, he has written influential essays on the Mexican comedian, Mario Moreno ("Cantinflas
Cantinflas
Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes , was a Mexican comic film actor, producer, and screenwriter known professionally as Cantinflas. He often portrayed impoverished campesinos or a peasant of pelado origin...
")," the lampooner José Guadalupe Posada
José Guadalupe Posada
Jose Guadalupe Posada: was a Mexican cartoonist illustrator and artist whose work has influenced many Latin American artists and cartoonists because of its satirical acuteness and political engagement....
, the Chicano
Chicano
The terms "Chicano" and "Chicana" are used in reference to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. However, those terms have a wide range of meanings in various parts of the world. The term began to be widely used during the Chicano Movement, mainly among Mexican Americans, especially in the movement's...
leader César Chávez
César Chávez
César Estrada Chávez was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers ....
, and the Tejana
Tejano
Tejano or Texano is a term used to identify a Texan of Mexican heritage.Historically, the Spanish term Tejano has been used to identify different groups of people...
singer Selena
Selena
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez , known simply as Selena, was a Mexican American singer-songwriter. She was named the "top Latin artist of the '90s" and "Best selling Latin artist of the decade" by Billboard for her fourteen top-ten singles in the Top Latin Songs chart, including seven number-one hits...
, as well as a book about the board game Lotería! (with Teresa Villegas), which includes Stavans’s own poems. He was also featured in one of the Smithsonian Q&A books.
Since 1993 he has been on the faculty at Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
, Massachusetts, where he is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture. He is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common
The Common (Magazine)
The Common is a nonprofit biannual magazine based at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. The magazine publishes stories, poems, essays, and images centered around "a modern sense of place." - History :...
, based at Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
. He has also taught a various other institutions, including Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. In 1997, Stavans was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
and has been the recipient of international prizes and honors, including the Latino Literature Prize, Chile’s Presidential Medal, and the Rubén Darío Distinction.
Influence
He has portrayed Jewish-American identity as EurocentricEurocentrism
Eurocentrism is the practice of viewing the world from a European perspective and with an implied belief, either consciously or subconsciously, in the preeminence of European culture...
and parochial. He has been a critic of the nostalgia generated by life in the Eastern European shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
of the 19th century. He is recognized for his explorations of Jewish culture in the Hispanic world. In 1994 he published the anthology Tropical Synagogues: Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers (1994). From 1997 to 2005 he edited the Jewish Latin America series at the University of New Mexico Press
University of New Mexico Press
The University of New Mexico Press, founded in 1929, is a university press that is part of the University of New Mexico. Its administrative offices are in the Office of Research , on the campus of UNM in Albuquerque....
. And his anthology The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature (2005) was the recipient of the National Jewish Book Award. Some of his essays on Jewish topics are included in The Inveterate Dreamer. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.
His inspirations range from Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
to Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
and Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
. (In his autobiography, Stavans recounts the episode, in the early stages of his career, when, in order to find his own style, he burned his collection of dozens of Borges’s books, p. 9.) He has written a small biography of the Chicano
Chicano
The terms "Chicano" and "Chicana" are used in reference to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. However, those terms have a wide range of meanings in various parts of the world. The term began to be widely used during the Chicano Movement, mainly among Mexican Americans, especially in the movement's...
lawyer Oscar "Zeta" Acosta
Óscar Acosta
Óscar Acosta is a Honduran writer, critic, politician and diplomat. Acosta started as a journalist in Peru for Tegucigalpa Magazine....
and a book-long meditation on Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
. In 2005, in a series of interviews with Neal Sokol called Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations, Stavans traces his beginnings, calls Hispanic civilization to task for its allergy to constructive self-criticism, discusses the work of Borges, Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
, Isaac Babel
Isaac Babel
Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of My Dovecote, and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature...
, Sholem Aleichem, Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
, Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer – July 24, 1991) was a Polish Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978...
, Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
, Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
, Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
, Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
, and others, and reflects on anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
and anti-Hispanic sentiment
Hispanophobia
Hispanophobia is a fear, distrust, aversion, or discrimination of Hispanic people, Hispanic culture and the Spanish language. Its opposite is Hispanophilia...
.
Stavans has devoted many years of study to the work of Gabriel García Márquez. His biography, Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years, slated for publication in 2010, is the first of two planned volumes. The biography traces Gabriel García Márquez's artistic development from childhood to the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish in 1967 and its English translation by Gregory Rabassa in 1970. Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, has called this biography "an engaging, informative study tracking the small beginnings of a literary giant and his magnum opus. It is also a love story: that of an important contemporary critic and thinker with a writer, his life, and his text. Stavans enlightens us, not just about one literary figure, but about the culture and history of a whole hemisphere in a book that never feels plodding or overtly academic. Stavans is a magical writer himself."
In A Critic’s Journey, published in 2009 by University of Michigan Press, Stavans writes about his life and work as a cultural critic. The book is a collection of pieces that brings together three cultures: Jewish, American, and Mexican. It includes pieces on writing On Borrowed Words, the Holocaust in Latin America, the growth of Latino studies in the U.S. academy, Stavans’ relationship with the Jewish Daily Forward, and translation in the shaping of Hispanic culture, as well as pieces on Sandra Cisneros, Richard Rodríguez, Isaiah Berlin, and W. G. Sebald, asnd close readings of the Don Quixote and the oeuvre of Roberto Bolaño.
Since the late 1990s, Stavans has devoted his energy to reinvigorating the literary genre of the conversation not as a promotional tool but as a patient, insightful instrument to explore them in intellectual depth. Neal Sokol interviewed Stavans in a book-long volume Eight Conversations (2004) on his Jewish and Latino heritage, translator Verónica Albin discussed the way the word “love” has changed through the age in the book Love and Language (2007) as well as on topic like libraries and censorship in Knowledge and Censorship (2008), and Canadian journalist Mordecai Drache (Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture) probes him on the Bible as a work of literature in With All Thine Heart (2010). In the U.S. Latino literary tradition, writers like Gloria Anzaldúa and Richard Rodriguez have also practiced the conversation as a meditative form.
Fiction
Stavans’s short stories are included in The One-Handed Pianist (1996) and The Disappearance (2006). One of them, "Morirse está en hebreo," about Jewish life in Mexico at the time of the 2000 presidential election, which appeared in the later anthology, was turned into a movie directed by Alejandro SpringallAlejandro Springall
Alejandro Springall is a Mexican film director and producer.Springall studied filmmaking at the London Film School. He returned to Mexico City in 1991 and started working with Mexican film producer Bertha Navarro, from whom he learned most of his producing skills. Springall started his career as a...
called "My Mexican Shivah." The film was praised by Martin Tsai in the New York Sun ("Lifetimes To Go in Old Mexico." August 29, 2008). Mr. Tsai writes "My Mexican Shivah offers so much profundity that almost every viewer can walk out of the theater with something to mull...Mr. Springall and screenwriter Jorge Goldenberg
Jorge Goldenberg
Jorge Goldenberg Hachero is a prolific screenwriter from Argentina.Jorge Goldenberg was born in San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1941.He studied film direction at the Film Institute of the National University of the Litoral in Santa Fe....
have so skillfully infused the film with an intriguing story, convincing performances, and a breezy pace that one nearly forgets that the action unfolds almost entirely within the confines of one house. The film's coda may be somewhat anticlimactic because the confrontations do not boil over as anticipated. But, like the rest of the film, it rings utterly true."
The themes in Stavans' fiction range from redemption and revenge to cultural authenticity and political activism. In "A Heaven Without Crows," he imagines Kafka's final letter to Max Brod
Max Brod
Max Brod was a German-speaking Czech Jewish, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka...
, suggesting that maybe he shouldn't burn his œuvre. "The One-Handed Pianist" deals with a rare disease affecting a piano concert player, impeding her the use of one hand. In "Xerox Man," written for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, about an Orthodox Jewish thief of rare books, Stavans meditates on imperfection. And in "The Disappearance," about the kidnapping of a famous Jewish stage actor in the Low Countries
Low Countries
The Low Countries are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany....
, Stavans explores the perils of silence. "The Disappearance" serves as the basis of a play he created with the Double Edge Theater Company. The play's premiere was staged at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on October 16, 2008 (see Mike Boehm's article "Seeking Haven on Earth." Los Angeles Times October 15, 2008).
His graphic novel "Mr. Spic Goes to Washington" (2008) was hailed by the writer Rigoberto González as "Stavans' latest contribution to a stellar career in literary troublemaking." Mr. González states in the El Paso Times (Texas) "Unlike "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," the Jimmy Stewart vehicle that inspires the title and premise of this book (a film that, incidentally, did not thrill Congress back in 1939 because of its depiction of a corrupt and self-absorbed branch of government), "Mr. Spic" inhabits a grittier version of this fantasy story line: There really is no place for such a pro-Latino agitator like him in Washington. And so his political career is cut short, though Stavans assures us that the ideas, dreams and visions of a pioneer do not vanish with his martyrdom." ("What If You Voted for the Vato?" El Paso Times October 19, 2008) Elaine Ayala writes in the San Antonio Express-News ""Mr. Spic" delivers Latino history lessons with comedic bows not only to Mr. Smith but Cervantes' Don Quixote, Woody Allen's "Zelig," JFK conspiracy theories, even Bill Clinton...The 110-page book is a quick, entertaining read that will appeal to a wider and younger audience than has read Stavans before. Fans of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" will enjoy its comedic value and caustic satire." ("Idealistic Mr. Spic Shocks and Provokes." San Antonio Express-News July 27, 2008)
Cultural Studies
His views on language are polemical in their approach to word and structure formation. Stavans believes that dictionariesDictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
and language academies are buffers whose improbable function is to provide continuity for a language, but suggests that such continuity, especially in the age of electronic communication, is fatuous. He accuses the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...
in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
of colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
, among other things. He has also studied the Iberian conquest of the Americas in the 16th century from a linguistic perspective. Translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
, for Stavans, represents appropriation
Cultural appropriation
Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation or assimilation, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of...
. He defined modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
as “a translated way of life” and has written and lectured on the role translators perform as communicating vessels across epochs and habitats.
Critical bibliography
He has been criticized by some academics and scholars who have taken issue with his formulation of US Latino identity and/or with his research in literary studies, for example, concerns regarding factual errors in his published output.- Allatson, Paul (2006). "Ilan Stavans's Latino USA. A Cartoon History (of a cosmopolitan intellectual)." Chasqui 35(1): 21–41. (Academic Journal)
- Dalleo, Raphael and Elena Machado Sáez (2007). The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature. http://home.fau.edu/rdalleo/web/latinocanon.htm New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Book)
- Flores, Juan (2000). From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity.http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-11076-1/from-bomba-to-hiphop New York: Columbia University Press. (Book)
- Luis, William (1997). Dance Between Two Cultures: Latino Caribbean Literature Written in the United States. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt UP.
- Sokol, Neal (2004). Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations (Book)
- Machado Sáez, Elena (2009). "Reconquista: Ilan Stavans and Multiculturalist Latino/a Discourse." Latino Studies 7.4 (2009): 410–434. (Academic Journal)
- Mendoza, Louis (2001). "On Buffaloes, Body Snatching, and Bandidismo: Ilan Stavans’s Appropriation of Oscar Acosta and the Chicano Experience." http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3481/is_/ai_n8268242 Bilingual Review 26(1): 79–86. (Academic Journal)Scholar search
- Modroño Garcia, Luz (2009). "Ilan Stavans, icono del seudointelectual norteamericano." Cuba Nuestra Digital http://www.cubanuestra.nu/web/article.asp?artID=15392 (Magazine Article)
- Richardson, Lynda (1999). "How to Be Both an Outsider and an Insider; 'The Czar of Latino Literature and Culture' Finds Himself Under Attack." The New York Times.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E5DB173DF930A25752C1A96F958260 (Newspaper Article)
- (1998). "'Living in the Hyphen' Between Latin and American." The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-18.dir/18a01701.htm (Magazine Article)
- (2009). "El esencial difamador Ilan Stavans/The Essential Slanderer Ilan Stavans." Vegamedia Press.com Source Cannot be Confirmed (Magazine Article)
Complete book-length original works
- 2011 - José Vaconcelos: The Prophet of Race.
- 2011 - What is la hispanidad?: A Conversation (with Iván Jaksic).
- 2010 - With All Thine Heart: Love and the Bible (with Mordecai Drache).
- 2010 - Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years.
- 2009 - A Critic's Journey
- 2008 - Resurrecting Hebrew.
- 2008 - Mr. Spic Goes to Washington, illustrations by Roberto Weil.
- 2008 - Knowledge and Censorship (with Verónica Albin).
- 2007 - Love and Language (with Verónica Albin).
- 2006 - The Disappearance: A Novella and Stories.
- 2005 - Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion.
- 2005 - Conversations with Ilan Stavans (with Neal Sokol).
- 2003 - Lotería!, art by Teresa Villegas, essay and riddles by Ilan Stavans.
- 2003 - Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language.
- 2001 - On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language.
- 2001 - Octavio Paz: A Meditation.
- 2001 - The Inveterate Dreamer: Essays and Conversations on Jewish Literature.
- 2000 - The Essential Ilan Stavans.
- 2000 - Latino U.S.A.: A Cartoon History, illustrations by Lalo López Alcaraz.
- 1998 - The Riddle of Cantinflas: Essays on Popular Hispanic Culture.
- 1996 - Art and Anger: Essays on Politics and the Imagination.
- 1996 - The One-Handed Pianist and Other Stories.
- 1995 - Bandido. Oscar 'Zeta' Acosta and the Chicano Experience.
- 1995 - The Hispanic Condition: Reflections on Culture and Identity in America.
- 1993 - Imagining Columbus: The Literary Voyage.
Edited works
- 2011 - Mexican-American Cuisine (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2011 - The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: An Anthology, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2010 - The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2010 - One Hundred Years of Solitude (Critical Insights), edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 2010 - Border Culture (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2010 - César Chávez (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2010 - Health Care (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2010 - Quinceañera (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2010 - Telenovelas (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2009 - Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2008 - Latina Writers (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2008 - Spanglish (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2008 - Immigration (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2008 - An Organizer's Tale: Speeches, written by César Chávez, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2007 - I Explain a Few Things: Selected Poems, written by Pablo Neruda, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2007 - A Luis Leal Reader (Latino Voices/Vidas), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2006 - Lengua Fresca, co-edited by Ilan Stavans and Harold Augenbraum.
- 2005 - Rubén Darío: Selected Writings, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 2005 - Encyclopedia Latina, edited by Ilan Stavans (four vols.).
- 2005 - The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature, edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 2004 - Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, edited by Ilan Stavans (3 vols.).
- 2003 - The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 2002 - The Scroll and the Cross: 1,000 Years of Jewish-Hispanic Literature, edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 2001 - Wachale! Poetry and Prose on Growing Up Latino, edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 1999 - Mutual Impressions: Writers of the Americas Reading One Another, edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 1998 - The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories, edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 1997 - Calvert Casey: The Collected Stories, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 1997 - The Urban Muse, edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 1997 - The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays, edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 1996 - Oscar "Zeta" Acosta: The Uncollected Works, edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 1996 - New World: Young Latino Writers, edited with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
- 1994 - Tropical Synagogues. Short Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers, edited by Ilan Stavans.
- 1993 - Growing up Latino: Memoirs and Stories, co-edited by Ilan Stavans and Harold Augenbraum.
Films
Morirse está en hebreo / My Mexican Shivah (2006) Directed by Alejandro SpringallAlejandro Springall
Alejandro Springall is a Mexican film director and producer.Springall studied filmmaking at the London Film School. He returned to Mexico City in 1991 and started working with Mexican film producer Bertha Navarro, from whom he learned most of his producing skills. Springall started his career as a...
.
External links
- Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Ilan Stavans from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Stavans on the Art of Cultural Criticism, ThoughtCastThoughtcastThoughtCast is a Podcast and public radio interview program with authors and academics. The interviews are conducted by Jenny Attiyeh, a former public radio and TV reporter from Manhattan and elsewhere whose previous work focused on covering the arts and ideas...
, Interview by Jenny Attiyeh - Stavans on Censorship, Translation Journal, Interview by Verónica Albin
- Stavans on Dictionaries, Translation Journal, Interview by Verónica Albin
- Stavans on Libraries, The Vocabula Review, Interview by Verónica Albin
- Stavans on Literature and Prayer, AGNI, Interview by Kim Ben-Porat
- Stavans on Translation, Literary Review, Interview by Neal Sokol
- Stavans on Spanglish-NPR interview
- Stavans on Spanglish-PBS interview
- Profile of Stavans in Village Voice
- Profile of Stavans in the Chronicle of Higher Education
- Stavans on Spanglish in Newsweek
- Translation of Don Quixote
- PBS Conversation with Ilan Stavans
- The Salvation of Anarchy: A Review of The Disappearance nthWORD Magazine
- Stavans en Cuadernos Cervantes
- Traducción de Don Quixote
- Stavans por Jorge Ramos
- Stavans en Instituto Cervantes
- Stavans lee a Pablo Neruda
- Stavans en Barcelona Review
- En mi opinion, a blog hosted by Ilan Stavans