ABSTRACT
Josh Lambert examines select literature, especially as it animates notions of homeland, diaspora, and exile. He notes that Jewish literature has always reached beyond the local and across historical and linguistic boundaries. Jewish literature has embraced hybridity and cultural mixing, without resorting to the sense of a monolithic Jewish experience. Lambert demonstrates that Jewish literature engages with individual and collective memory, while it navigates contemporary considerations at multiple levels. Among the works explored are Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man (2002), Ayelet Tsabari’s The Best Place on Earth (2013), and Achy Obejas’s Days of Awe (2001). Lambert concludes that, “As the century goes on, this literature will surely grapple with the changes that face Judaism and Jewish culture as the environmental crisis, further advances in biology and technology, fundamental transformations in how we think about gender and identity, and of course national and international politics, play out in Jewish communities across the globe – and, as they do so, literary texts will contribute to a complex, global imaginative project.”
