Abstract
Among the numerous groups that have negotiated their fragmented identities through various literary practices in the last few decades, the Jewish collective has come to symbolize the epitome of diaspora and homelessness. In particular, British-Jewish writers have recently started to reconstruct their fragmented memories through writing. This is an extremely interesting phenomenon in the case of those Jewish women who are fiercely struggling to find some sense of personhood as Jewish, British, female, immigrant subjects. Linda Grant’s novel The Cast Iron Shore will be analyzed so as to unveil the narrative mechanisms through which many of the identity tensions experienced by contemporary Jewish women are exhibited. The different stages in the main character’s journey will be examined by drawing on theories on the construction of Jewish identity and femininity, and by applying the model of multidirectional memory fostered by various contemporary thinkers such as Michael Rothberg, Stef Craps, Max Silverman, and Bryan Cheyette. The main claim to be demonstrated is that this narration links the (hi)stories of oppression and racism endured both by the Jewish and the Black communities in order to make the protagonist encounter the Other, develop her mature political self, and liberate her mind from rigid religious, patriarchal, and racial stereotypes. The Cast Iron Shore becomes, then, a successful attempt to demonstrate that the (hi)stories of displacement endured by divergent communities during the twentieth century are connected, and it is the establishment of these connections that can help contemporary Jewish subjects to claim new notions of their personhood in the public sphere.
Highlights
IntroductionBritish-Jewish Writers and Multidirectional Links “A long-standing legacy of violence, compounded by new disasters, has engendered a set of rites—both individual and collective—that have taken many forms: the reconstruction of past histories, the retrieval of lost communities, the activation of historic sites, and a quest for origins” ([1], p. xi)
British-Jewish Writers and Multidirectional Links “A long-standing legacy of violence, compounded by new disasters, has engendered a set of rites—both individual and collective—that have taken many forms: the reconstruction of past histories, the retrieval of lost communities, the activation of historic sites, and a quest for origins” ([1], p. xi).This article starts with Hirsch and Miller’s words since they wisely refer to our current era
In the society they describe, individual and collective damaged identities and traumatic memories have been redefined in the public sphere through a good range of cultural practices
Summary
British-Jewish Writers and Multidirectional Links “A long-standing legacy of violence, compounded by new disasters, has engendered a set of rites—both individual and collective—that have taken many forms: the reconstruction of past histories, the retrieval of lost communities, the activation of historic sites, and a quest for origins” ([1], p. xi). Zina Rohan, acquired a central role in the British literary milieu of the 1990s Since her first publication in 1993, her works have recreated many current Jewish and female concerns, such as the conflicting use of space in the construction of Jewish identity and the depiction of fragmented memories across the subsequent generations of Holocaust survivors. Many of her novels revolve around the stories of Jewish women reinventing themselves through multifarious journeys of discovery. Eurocentrism requires a commitment to broadening the usual focus of trauma theory and to acknowledging the traumas of non-Western or minority populations for their own sake” ([5], p. 19)
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