Bilingual Anthology: Theatre / Antología Bilingüe: Teatro by Nora Glickman

Abstract

says thatone such assumption is the "tautological idea thatsince India isa huge baggy monster, thenovels that accommodate it have to be baggy monsters as well." Another assump tion is thatbecause "thepostcolonial, often diasporic, Indian is a hybrid entity, the language of the postco lonial too must be hybrid, with a scattering of untranslated Indian words and phrases and odd sentence constructions." Chaudhuri says, "In a culture of signification, the issue of what a 'real' masterpiece is, or whether such a thingcan even exist, is an irrelevance; what matters is the marketing and consumption, after each successful publicity campaign and the awarding of each prize, of the signiher, the idea of themaster piece, the idea of the Indian novel in English." Amit Chaudhuri should have added an essay to substantiate his comments above. Readers need to know what happens behind the curtains. RamlalAgarwal Jalna, Maharashtra, India Nora Glickman. Bilingual Anthology: Theatre /Antologi'a Biling?e: Teatro. Jorge Dubatti, intro. Buenos Aires. Edi ciones Tu Llave. 2008. 388 pages, ill. US$23. isbn978-950-706-107-3 BilingualAnthology:Theatre/ Antologia Biling?e: Teatro presents, in English and Spanish on facing pages, the work of the Argentine-U.S. play wright and short-story writer Nora Glickman. The translations and the editing of thevolume are the work of the playwright herself. The volume contains fourplays: A CertainRaquel I Una talRaquel, the one-act A Day inNew York /Un dia enNueva York, LiturgiesI Liturgias, and thewinner of the JeromeTheater Award, Sub urbanNews INoticias de Suburbio.All of theseplays were originally staged between 1993 and 1998, but over the years theyhave evolved as the author revised in response to feed back received during production. Commentary on Glickman's work is representedby a vague but enthu siastic introductory essay by Jorge Dubatti and, following each play, brief excerpts fromvarious typesof critical discussion. Bilingual Anthol ogywas already in press when the multiauthored criticalvolume Claves en el teatrode Nora Glickman (2007) was published in Buenos Aires by Nueva Generaci?n, and for this reason thenew anthology does not draw upon this abundant source of commentary on Glickman's theater. It includes, as well, posters and cast photos from productions, a bibli ography of published versions of theplays, and a chronology of their performances,whether full stagings or readings. The two earliest plays, Suburban News and A Day inNew York, are similar in their subject matter and in the author's bemused, semicomi cal approach to it.Each details the tumultuous, bicultural existence of a Latina woman living in theNew York area. The heroine of Subur banNews interactswith supportive female friends, while theprotagonist of A Day inNew York randomly encounters some of the colorful char acterswho populate thebig city. The other two plays also cen ter on female protagonists but are based on research and have a more somber tone. A Certain Raquel dra matizes the lifeof a historical figure, Raquel Liberman, a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Argentina who was trapped into prostitution by the Zwi Migdal association of Jewish white slavers and denounced her exploiters. Liturgies,set inNew Mex ico, is a creative elaboration of the much-debated hypothesis that the state's longtime Latino residents are descended fromcrypto-Jews.In Lit urgies, a seventeenth-century victim of the Inquisition haunts a current day Latina woman, transforming her identityand throwinghermarriage into crisis. Though the treatmentof the theme is highly imaginative, as preparation for writing itGlickman traveled toNew Mexico and partici pated in seminars on crypto-Judaism inwhat is now the U.S. Southwest. Although the volume's proof reading is farfromflawless,Bilingual Anthologyserves itsfunctionofkeep ingNora Glickman's plays available and isa livelyand variegated collec tion with particular relevance toboth women's and Jewish studies. Naomi Lindstrom UniversityofTexas atAustin JonathanLitteil.Le sec et l'humide. Paris. Gallimard. 2008. 140 pages. 15.50. isbn978-2-07-011945-5 JonathanLittellburst onto theFrench literary scene with a 900-page novel set during theHolocaust, Les bien veillantes, which became a best-sell er and earned him the prestigious HMarchs April 2009 i77 ...