About the Book

Memories of Our Future

Memories of Our Future

Selected Essays 1982–1999
January 2001
Trade Paperback · 326 Pages
$17.95 U.S. · $21.50 CAN · £11.99 U.K. · €12.99 E.U.
ISBN 9780872863606
City Lights Publishers

 

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Description

Voted one of the Top 25 Books of 1999 by the Village Voice.

An outstanding anthology of essays surveying the complexities of Mediterranean cultures; the diverse, changing space of the Balkans, Middle East, and North Africa—areas of diasporas, dislocations, and genocidal exterminations provoked by nationalism and religious fanaticism. Of special interest are his observations and analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian confrontation, Arab/Jewish poetics, and Jewish identity in America.—Midwest Book Review

Table of Contents

Local Politics: The Background as Foreword Ammiel Alcalay

Acknowledgments

Five Hundred Years After: What Was Left Unsaid about Sepharad

Juan Goytisolo

PRELUDES: AN OPENING

``weighing the losses, like stones in your hand'

Atonement

OF BOOKS AND CITIES/ THE JOURNEY

My Mediterranean

The Quill's Embroidery: Untangling a Tradition

The Quill's Embroidery: Poetry, Tradition, and the ``Postmodern'

Paris / New York / Jerusalem: The Unscheduled Flight of Edmond Jabes and Jacques Derrida

Perplexity Index

Desert Solitaire: On Edmond Jabes

For Edouard Roditi

Behind the Scenes: Before After Jews and Arabs

FORBIDDEN TERRITORIES, PROMISED LANDS

On Arabesques

After the Last Sky

Who's Afraid of Mahmoud Darwish?

Israel and the Levant: ``Wounded Kinship's Last Resort'

Forbidden Territory, Promised Lands

In True Colors

Culture without a Country

Too Much Past

The State of the Gulf: Abdelrahman Munif and Hanan al-Shaykh

Our Memory Has No Future: On Etel Adnan

``The war was ending, the diasporas beginning'

DISPATCHES

A Stitch in Time

Court Report: Prolonging a Farce

The Trial: A Real Farce

``Ay, de mi aljama': Palestinians and Israelis Meet, in Spain!

Israel / Palestine 101: A Letter to Robert Creeley

Quality Control

Ushering in the New Order: Repercussions from the Gulf War Reflections at the End of 1992

Why Israel?

THE RETURN: VARIATIONS ON A THEME

Understanding Revolution

Exploding Identities: Notes on Ethnicity and Literary History

Speaking with Forked Tongues, or Parables of Eq

About the Authors

Ammiel Alcalay is a poet, translator, critic, and scholar who teaches at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is the Deputy Chair of the PhD Program in English. His latest work is Scrapmetal (Factory School, 2006). He is also editor and translator of Keys to the Garden, and Semezdin Mehmedinovic's Sarajevo Blues, both published by City Lights. Born in Barcelona in 1931, Juan Goytisolo is Spain's greatest living writer. His books include: Mask of Idenity, The Marx Family Saga, and, State of Siege. He lives in Marrakesh, Morocco.