Nombres, exilios, encierros. Susana Gertopán y la(s) escritura(s) judía(s) de Paraguay

Abstract

The Jewish community in Paraguay is small and almost unknown in the field of Jewish studies. Through a short analysis of the works of one of this community’s most interesting literary voices, Susana Gertopán, the article attempts to pay close attention, so as to identify several recurring and painful topics from this chapter of history: the distinguishing features of exile, the challenges of the name, intergenerational transmission of the trauma of the Shoah, the problems of the immigrants from Eastern Europe in adapting to this strange and tropical land, and, in short, the traces of Jewish life in a country that was in eclipse for decades because of a dictatorship that turned it into a ghetto, isolated from the world. But where, nevertheless, life continued to grow. Full of scars.