Abstract
This chapter analyzes two contemporary novels of the “postmemory” generation depicting the aftermath of surviving the Shoah in exile: Alison Pick’s Far to Go (2010) and Natasha Solomons’ bestselling novel Mr Rosenblum’s List: or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman (2010). Through analysis of these two “postmemory” novels, Becker discusses the representation of Jewish refugees in twenty-first century literature, in which narratives of past and present belonging are constructed through sharing—or refusing to share—trauma and memory.
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Notes
- 1.
While Eurocentric tendencies in (literary) trauma studies have been questioned and criticized in the past years (cf. Craps 2013, 9–14), the processes of intergenerational transmission of trauma and history that Hirsch discusses with regards to the Shoah can nonetheless hold relevance for other discourses regarding such experiences, a resonance she herself notes and welcomes (2012, 18; cf. Bloch 2018, 648–650).
- 2.
I would like to thank Sheila Ghose for her observation regarding the significance of the “forms of cakes.”
- 3.
Alice Bloch also observes this relevance of food, among other stimuli, as instigator for sharing memories among contemporary families with a refugee background in England. She notes that “[c]ontext and proximity often facilitate intergenerational narratives and can be triggered by place, space, time and multi-sensory stimuli. Food, return visits, photographs … could all result in the sharing of stories and memories” (Bloch 2018, 657).
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Becker, M. (2023). “Slowly Into Darkness”: Postmemory in Alison Pick’s Far to Go and Natasha Solomons’ Mr Rosenblum’s List. In: Classon Frangos, M., Ghose, S. (eds) Refugee Genres. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09257-2_10
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