The Converso's Return - (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture) by Dalia Kandiyoti (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Converso's Return is a study of recent fiction and memoirs by U.S. Latinx, Spanish, French, and Turkish authors about the current revival of Iberian Jewish history, in particular, the largely forced conversions of Jews to Catholicism in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Spain and Portugal. This seemingly remote history has been the topic of a substantial library of contemporary literary and popular writing, especially since the 1992 quincentennial commemorations of the 1492 conversions and expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain and the conquest of the Americas. The recent claiming of Sephardi converso ancestry by Christian (and to a much lesser extent Muslim) descendants in the Americas, Europe, and Turkey has taken place simultaneously with the fictional and testimonial writing about conversos and their descendants by authors on several continents. What is it about conversos that has sparked their imagination? What do we learn and rethink about conversions' afterlives including their resurgence in the present, and how does this help us understand how and why we return to and resuscitate the past? The literary writing in English, Spanish, French, and Turkish about the fate of the converts through the centuries that The Converso's Return investigates together help us complicate ideas about conversos, contemporary historical consciousness, the role of genealogy in culture, collective memory, missing/imagined archives, Sephardi identities, and world literature"--

Book Synopsis

Five centuries after the forced conversion of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to Catholicism, stories of these conversos' descendants uncovering long-hidden Jewish roots have come to light and taken hold of the literary and popular imagination. This seemingly remote history has inspired a wave of contemporary writing involving hidden artifacts, familial whispers and secrets, and clandestine Jewish ritual practices pointing to a past that had been presumed dead and buried. The Converso's Return explores the cultural politics and literary impact of this reawakened interest in converso and crypto-Jewish history, ancestry, and identity, and asks what this fascination with lost-and-found heritage can tell us about how we relate to and make use of the past.

Dalia Kandiyoti offers nuanced interpretations of contemporary fictional and autobiographical texts about crypto-Jews in Cuba, Mexico, New Mexico, Spain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Turkey. These works not only imagine what might be missing from the historical archive but also suggest an alternative historical consciousness that underscores uncommon convergences of and solidarities within Sephardi, Christian, Muslim, converso, and Sabbatean histories. Steeped in diaspora, Sephardi, transamerican, Iberian, and world literature studies, The Converso's Return illuminates how the converso narrative can enrich our understanding of history, genealogy, and collective memory.

Review Quotes

"Dalia Kandiyoti lucidly traces the history and memory of crypto-Jewishness across historical periods, languages, and nations. Theoretically sophisticated, historically rigorous, and superbly written, The Converso's Return is a stimulating read for anyone interested in how literature makes it possible to reimagine a past fraught with contradictions, absences, and silences."--Tabea Alexa Linhard "author of Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean History"

"Embedded in a sophisticated theoretical framework and a wide range of historical reference, The Converso's Return brilliantly explores and confronts questions of memory's use and representation. In creating a new literary map based on seemingly disparate texts that actually belong together, Dalia Kandiyoti is ever vigilant to the political implications of all forms of return."--Ammiel Alcalay "author of After Jews and Arabs"

About the Author

Dalia Kandiyoti is Associate Professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.