The resulting textual fragmentation removes any stable point of reference so that scholars and readers of 'Empathy' must reconstruct various narrative elements in trying to make sense of Anna O.’s world. Schulman uses a variety of narrative strategies that culminate in a somewhat messy palimpsest attempting to convey the nuanced experience of the stranger. While characters of earlier Jewish American texts by writers such as Anzia Yezierska were readily understood as strangers working towards ‘becoming American’, it is implicitly accepted that Anna O., living in queer 1990s New York City, is already a completely assimilated American. For Schulman, the task of illuminating the stranger condition that her main character inhabits is a tricky one. makes a new life for herself through negotiating what I will call a liminal identity. traverses many landscapes and, unlike other characters in the novel that work to transcend their stranger identity, Anna O. In her novel 'Empathy' (1992), Sarah Schulman imagines what it means to be caught between the assimilation of Ashkenazi Jewish Americans and the otherness of Eastern Europe.
0 kommentar(er)
