Can These Bones Live?: Translation, Survival, and Cultural MemoryCan These Bones Live? views translation as a mode of literary invigoration indeed, as a process at the core of all important cultural transactions rather than a mere utilitarian means of converting the terms of one language into another. Brodzki considers a wide array of canonical and lesser-known fictional and autobiographical works by authors from North America, Europe, and Africa including Philip Roth, Italo Calvino, Jorge Semprun, and Buchi Emecheta that foreground translation as narrative theme, figurative device, and textual strategy. The book emphasizes translation's critical role in literary history by examining depictions of the translator figure in contemporary literature and by showing that reading slave narratives through the prism of intercultural translation expands and enriches our understanding of both slavery and genre. At its center, the book argues for translation's crucial role in processes of intergenerational transmission. By linking such processes particularly to mourning and memorialization in texts shaped by the experience of catastrophe, Brodzki demonstrates how translation ensures the afterlife of individual texts and cultural narratives across time and space. |
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African African American Ajuzia American André Schwarz-Bart Andrew Ashby-Jones Autobiography of Federico Benjamin British Buchenwald calls Calvino Caribbean Cassandra Chamberet chapter colonial concentration camp context critical crucial death discourse Echewa's Edelshtein Emecheta's event exile experience father Federico Sanchez feminist fiction Frankie French gender genre Holocaust identity Igbo implications intercultural Jacques Derrida Jewish Jews Jorge Semprún Kepesh language legacy linguistic literary literature living Long Voyage loss Ludmilla means mode Morhange-Bégué mother mourning mulâtresse Solitude narrator Nazi Nigeria Nne-nne's novel Ojebeta original Ozick's past photograph Pierre Nora political postcolonial Professor of Desire Radomsko reader reading relation representation resistance rhetorical Roth's Saw the Sky scene Schwarz-Bart's sexual Shoshana Felman Sigmund Freud Sky Catch Fire Slave Girl slave narratives slavery social Spanish story structural survival survivor symbolic testimony textual theory tion trans translation transmission trauma University Press Walter Benjamin woman women writing Yiddish York