I feel Noah’s ark, the Tower of Babel, the story of Abraham… - Ilan Stavans

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I feel Noah’s ark, the Tower of Babel, the story of Abraham’s calling, Isaac’s Akedah, and Jacob’s ordeal and Moses’ liberation odyssey are imprinted in my DNA. I come from a Jewish-Mexican family in which culture was a form of religion. If pressed, I confess not to remember a specific moment during which I read Genesis. But that’s what the classics are: we get them not through reading but by osmosis.

Ilan Stavans

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About Ilan Stavans

Ilan Stavans (born Ilan Stavchansky, 1961) is a writer and academic who born in Mexico and now lives in the USA. He writes and speaks on American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures.

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Alternative Names: Ilan Stavchansky Slomianski

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no translator is godlike; on the contrary, all are miserably human, meaning imperfect in their quest. Therefore, the practice of translation exists, as it should, in a state of constant renewal.

In Mexico, I was a Jew. In the U.S., I became a Mexican, but all these dichotomies helped me to see that you can be an outsider and an insider simultaneously. You become a member of another minority, but not fully. Here I'm a Mexican in the U.S. I'm a Latino. I'm a Jew. I'm an American.

Reading a classic, I believe, ought to entail an element of foreignness...Classics are windows into an epoch, not only in content but in form.

I feel Noah’s ark, the Tower of Babel, the story of Abraham’s calling, Isaac’s Akedah, and Jacob’s ordeal and Moses’ liberation odyssey are imprinted… - Ilan Stavans

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