On Borrowed Words (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Ilan Stavans
- First Published: 2001
- Type of Work: Autobiography
- Time of Work: 1961-2000
- Setting: Mexico City; various European, Near Eastern, South American, and African countries; New York; Amherst, Massachusetts
- Principal Characters: Ilan Stavans, Bela Stavchansky, Abremele Stavans, Darián Stavans
- Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography
- Subjects: Language or languages, 1960’s, 1970’s, Family or family life, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Africa or Africans, Memory, Twentieth century, Europe or Europeans, 1980’s, New England, Jews or Jewish life, Mexico or Mexicans, Central America or Central Americans, 1990’s, Bilingualism, South America or South Americans, Latin America or Latin Americans, Massachusetts
Although the subtitle of Ilan Stavans’s book promises a linguistic theme, much of the early emphasis falls rather on his family and his travels. A Mexican-born professor of Latin American culture, he is also a writer who has discovered that he is most at home in New York City (to which New England, in his mind, serves as a sort of extended suburb) and most creative in the English language. To arrive at this geographic and linguistic destination, Stavans had to come to terms not only with his Jewish heritage but with the four languages which his ethnicity, his homeland, and his present...
[The entire page is 1944 words long]
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