The Family Tree
(Las genealogías)
1981
For several years, Margo Glantz sat down with her parents, two Jewish immigrants in Mexico, and recorded their memories. Writing down their recollections with her characteristic grace and sense of humor, Glantz slowly turns this book into a family autobiography, tracking the Central European roots of the Glantz family and moving toward the pain of a forced pilgrimage to the new world. Here the memories and life experience of this couple of old and traditional Jews, forever foreign in the land were they ended up spending most of their lives, get mixed with the narrative voice of their insightful daughter, who has the ability lo look at them with intellectual distance but still allowing herself to feel touched by her parents joys and miseries. And as she writes about them, she embarks on a narrative journey that helps her find, or at least dive into, her own identity.
This is a one of a kind testimony of the experience of a Jewish family in Latin America, narrated from the point of view of one the most remarkable female writers of the region.
Critics
“Las genealogías is an excellent example of feminine autobiography, as a hybrid text, and as an extraordinary contribution to the growing body of Latin American Jewish literature.”
—Darrell Lochart.
“To speak of Las genealogías by Margo Glantz is to speak of the author herself and of a process of searching for identity.”
—Elizabeth Otero-Krauthammer
“[Glantz’s] writing continues but also renovates and diversifies a Jewish vein of humor and critical observation… it is possible to point out certain tendencies that are often identified as hallmarks of Jewish humor and that are very evidently typical of the wit of Margo Glantz.”
—Naomi Lindstrom
Rights sold
• Spanish (World): Penguin Random House
• English (UK): Serpent’s Tail