Without the classics, we are a tabula rasa: we have no memory. We not only open the classics to re-create the past; we also use them to calibrate the… - Ilan Stavans

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Without the classics, we are a tabula rasa: we have no memory. We not only open the classics to re-create the past; we also use them to calibrate the present.

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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.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Ilan Stavchansky Slomianski
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Additional quotes by Ilan Stavans

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.

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I tell my students that education isn’t about facts. It isn’t about theories, either. It is about tracking your thoughts, about witnessing how stories are formed in your mind. It is about allowing the mind not to be clogged, about letting it see not what it does but how it does it. The rules of criticism are the same as the rules of other types of literature. These rules boil down to one: finding the right words to tell the right narrative at the right time. Nothing else matters.

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