Claudio Lomnitz discusses Nuestra América with Claire Messud

In Nuestra América, eminent anthropologist and historian Claudio Lomnitz traces his grandparents’ exile from Eastern Europe to South America. In his appearance at BPL Presents, he discusses this landmark journey with novelist Claire Messud.

Beyond exile, the book is a pretext to explain and analyze the worldview, culture, and spirit of countries such as Peru, Colombia, and Chile, from the perspective of educated Jewish emigrants imbued with the hope and determination typical of those who escaped Europe in the 1920s. Lomnitz’s grandparents, who were both trained to defy ghetto life with the pioneering spirit of the early Zionist movement, became intensely involved in the Peruvian leftist intellectual milieu and its practice of connecting Peru’s indigenous past to an emancipatory internationalism that included Jewish culture and thought. After being thrown into prison supposedly for their socialist leanings, Lomnitz’s grandparents were exiled to Colombia, where they were subject to its scandals, its class system, its political life. Through this lens, Lomnitz explores the almost negligible attention and esteem that South America holds in US public opinion. The story then continues to Chile during World War II, Israel in the 1950s, and finally to Claudio’s youth, living with his parents in Berkeley, California, and Mexico City.

Claudio Lomnitz is an anthropologist, historian, and critic who works broadly on Latin American culture and politics. He is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Lomnitz’s books include Death and the Idea of Mexico and The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magón, among many others. As a regular columnist in the Mexico City paper La Jornada and an award-winning dramaturgist, he is committed to bringing historical and anthropological understanding into public debate.

He will be discussing his new book with Claire Messud, whose five novels include The Emperor’s Children, a New York Times Book of the Year in 2006; The Woman Upstairs (2013); and, most recently, The Burning Girl (2017), a finalist for the LA Times Book Award in Fiction. She is also the author of a book of novellas, The Hunters (2001). Her memoir-in-essays, Kant’s Little Prussian Head & Other Reasons Why I Write was published in October, 2020 by W.W. Norton. She teaches creative writing at Harvard University, is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and The New York Times Book Review, and lives in Cambridge, MA with her family.

Please register for this free Zoom event. Registered audience members will receive a Zoom link prior to the event.