Description
Book SynopsisExplores how traumatic loss affects identity and how those who are shaped by loss give shape, in turn, to the empty place where something - relationships, family, culture - was and is no longer. Taking the example of the decimation of European Jewry during the Nazi era, this title confronts the problem of transforming trauma into cultural memory.
Trade Review"Explores cultural memory and the Holocaust through memoir, art, and literary criticism and the personal essay... All of Lefkovitz' considerations of the Holocaust's legacy in her own life are marked by ambivalence. And she suspects that the 'most powerful aspect of the legacy may be ambivalence': 'We have Hitler to thank for our presence in America.' This is the ultimate paradox in the work of shaping losses: when a person recognizes that she would not exist were it not for that loss." -- Arwen Donahue, The Women's Review of Books "Epstein and Lefkovitz have collected an admirable mix of essays on Holocaust memory that are critically honest, intensely personal, and courageously reflective about the scope and meaning of unbearable tragedy." --Biography ADVANCE PRAISE "The Holocaust remains a live topic in America, and Shaping Losses takes an important new approach to it. This compelling collection invites us to consider the Holocaust from the perspectives of a new generation and to ask how, fifty years later, this trauma shapes itself as cultural memory. Bringing together Holocaust studies, women's studies, and cultural studies, Shaping Losses will deepen our understanding of the relations and intersections of history, trauma, and the human psyche." -- Alicia Ostriker, author of Feminist Revision and the Bible: The Unwritten Volume
