Published: 2021-12-30

“I can’t […] try her shoes or fate on”: Auto/Biography in Second-generation Holocaust Literature

Robert Kusek Logo ORCID , Aleksandra Szczepan Logo ORCID
Section: studies and essays
https://doi.org/10.31261/errgo.10167

Auto/biography in second-generation Holocaust literature

Abstract

This paper offers a new perspective on the life narratives produced by second-generation Holocaust survivors – specifically, it proposes to consider the genre of biography to be a distinctive mode of second-generation autobiography. In its detailed analysis of Vera Gran. The Accused (2010; English translation 2013), a story of the Jewish-Polish star chanteuse and Holocaust survivor Vera Gran, the essay argues that the survivor’s biography becomes Tuszyńska’s laboratory of the self: an opportunity for the member of the postmemory generation to understand her very own experience. The paper also demonstrates how auto/biography – this essentially heterogenic life narrative – may successfully address some of the key issues for both Holocaust and life-writing studies: self-/other-identification, appropriateness, victimisation, authenticity, truthfulness, and gender-related constructs.

Citation rules

Kusek, R., & Szczepan, A. (2021). “I can’t […] try her shoes or fate on”: Auto/Biography in Second-generation Holocaust Literature: Auto/biography in second-generation Holocaust literature. Er(r)go. Theory - Literature - Culture, (43), 207–227. https://doi.org/10.31261/errgo.10167

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Er(r)go 43 (2/2021)

No. 43 (2021)
Published: 2021-12-31


ISSN: 1508-6305
eISSN: 2544-3186
Ikona DOI 10.31261/errgo

Publisher
University of Silesia Press | Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego i Wydawnictwo Naukowe "Śląsk"

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