My inner voice can do Spanish, Italian, Russian, Arabic, and many kinds of British accents, however. It’s really good at narrating Cockney, which is always phonetically written, anyway. I don’t know that many languages, though. I learned French in high school and in college. I was born to a Spanish-speaking household, and learned it as my first language. When I was four, as I was being prepared to go to pre-school, English became my home language. My parents still spoke Spanish, and my grandparents spoke it exclusively, but I spoke English. To this day, I understand a great deal, and can speak about half of it back. I can read it pretty well, but my ability to speak my inner-most feelings, or discuss something academic, those areas are lacking. I’m at about a 4th grade level where that’s concerned, sadly. I often thought one day I’d live in Spain or someplace where I could really be immersed in Spanish and get it “back” so to speak. That hasn’t happened. My degrees are primarily in American culture and history, though I did take more than a few classes on Middle Eastern history in my BA program.
That interest was fueled by a lot of things. Primarily that Muslims were presented as mysterious and backwards just about everywhere, and I was curious about the culture. But also because I was often mistaken for a Muslim, or an Iranian, or a Persian, or an Arabic girl. And in my mind all of those cultures sort of swam together. Even when I was little, my mother said that the Arab dealers at the LA swap meets would ask her if she was babysitting a little Arab girl. I assume that it may have something to do with my father’s heritage. My mother’s people came from Ireland and Spain. Her family is short, very pale skinned, and some even have blue or green eyes. My father, however, comes from a family of tall men, with dark skin, and deep brown-black eyes. I look like a combination of both parents, but I got wavy dark hair, brown eyes, a large nose, and full lips. I’ve always seen myself as a kind of racial chameleon as a result. Nobody guesses my ethnicity straight away. And people love to ask. “What are you?” is a question I got a lot. Not just from rednecks either. Teachers, lawyers, professionals, fellow graduate students, even a professor or two. I always ask the person to tell me what they think I am. Cuban-American, as you can imagine, is never the answer. I rarely even get Latin or Spanish or Mexican. Mostly, people play it safe with Italian (my last name is sort of Italian) or “Persian.” I’m a strange mix to begin with, and I grew up in mixed-up southern California. My cultural heritage is a jumble.
The book is about how people from all different cultures and circumstances came together to preserve a book (the Sarajevo Haggadah, a real book btw) on principle. The book itself, the earliest illuminated Jewish Haggadah, is a testament to sharing cultural heritage. It is a jewish document created in Spain, illustrated by an African slave, using iconography and stylistic conventions of Muslims and Christians. It is sheltered and secreted away through the many bouts of anti-semitism and “ethnic cleansing” that plagued Europe since the 1400s. It ends up in Sarajevo as a result of the good will and sacrifice of Muslims, Christians, and Jews. It also almost gets destroyed by the bad will of people from the same groups. It’s a miracle it survives. It hit at a lot of my interests and background. It’s about a mishmash of ethnicities, races, and languages coming together (and the histories around and between them), it’s about a BOOK, it has strong female characters who talk about and do all kinds of things, and it has a nice little mystery (several mysteries really). And it is about how both simple and complex circumstances alter the course of a document’s history, and thus cultural history. I hearted it.
If you liked Devil in the White City, The Historian, or are interested in European Jewish history you’ll probably enjoy this book. I was obsessed with it for days.
For people who’ve already read it, I have some questions:
What did you think of the character of Hannah’s mother? Were the sacrifices she made in her life worth it, as she claimed?
What do you think of the romance aspect of Hannah’s storyline?
Some awful things happened in the history of the people of this particular book. Which was hardest for you to deal with? Did any part of the book require you to stop or step away?
Message me or comment below!
