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Sherwin Nuland: Lost in America
March 30 2004, 7:30 PM
Ina & Jack Kay Community Hall, Washington DCJCC
1529 16th Street, NW
March 31 2004, 7:30 PM
Pohick Regional Library
6450 Sydenstricker Road, Burke
Sherwin Nuland's life would seem a classic tale of immigrant achievement: born in the Bronx, he grew up to become a professor of surgery at Yale and winner of the National Book Award for How We Die. Yet his memoir, Lost in America, opens with him so "disabled by pathological preoccupations" that his doctors recommend a lobotomy. In this powerful book, Nuland traces this stark paradox back to his father, a stubborn, temperamental Russian immigrant whose embrace of America is frustrated by economic setbacks and illness—and whose despair continues to haunt Nuland forty years after his death.
Ilan Stavans
April 19 2004, 7:30 PM
Ina & Jack Kay Community Hall, Washington DCJCC
Born in Mexico City to Eastern European Jewish parents, Ilan Stavans has spent his career exploring the connections between Jewish and Hispanic cultures—from Columbus to comic strips, to the work of Borges and Kafka. In his new book, Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language, he looks at this fusion of Spanish and English, and compares its emergence as a language with the rise of Yiddish. Stavans's many books include On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language, Tropical Synagogues, and Latino USA: A Cartoon History.
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