Surviving to Tell the Tale: 'No One is Here Except All of Us'

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Published: Dec 10, 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/lincu-2018-2-0122
Keywords:
fantasy Holocaust memory representation Romania storytelling survival trauma

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Cristina Chevereșan
West University of Timişoara, Romania

Abstract

The article focuses on Romanian-American Ramona Ausubel’s 2012 No One Is Here Except All of Us. Written in English by a second-generation immigrant to the United States, the World War II story unfolds dramatically as a fable that relies upon community, memory and imagination. It revolves around the protagonists’ shared belief that by erasing and reinventing their past, by starting their lives anew via reshuffled creation myths, their small assembly of forgotten individuals might survive in an enclave of its own, fantastic. This makes Ausubel’s unique approach to the Holocaust and its pogroms part of a compelling series of trauma narratives, as a biographically-informed fictional account of factual circumstances. By emphasizing the crucial, cathartic dimension of storytelling and employing it textually and meta-textually, the book blurs the boundaries between genres. The author’s mediated insight into community stereotyping, persecution, solidarity and, ultimately, migration, and its skillful integration into a postmodern (counter) fairytale, will be scrutinized as valuable and effective contemporary awareness-raising tools.

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How to Cite
Chevereșan, C. “Surviving to Tell the Tale: ’No One Is Here Except All of Us’”. Linguaculture, vol. 9, no. 2, Dec. 2018, pp. 41-50, doi:10.47743/lincu-2018-2-0122.
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Vol. 9 No. 2 (2018)
Section
Articles
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Author Biography

Cristina Chevereșan, West University of Timişoara, Romania

Cristina Chevereșan is an Associate Professor at the West University of Timişoara, Romania, where she teaches modern and contemporary American Literature, Culture and Civilization. She is Assistant Director of the English Department’s American Studies MA Program and a member of several European and American scientific societies and professional associations. She is the past recipient of fellowships from the Salzburg Global Seminar, UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies, and the School of Criticism and Theory. Fulbright Senior scholar and Fulbright Ambassador, she has published six books in English and Romanian, as well as numerous articles in national and international journals, collected volumes, and the Romanian cultural press. She has (co-)translated and edited several other volumes.

References

Ausubel, Ramona. No One Is Here Except All of Us. New York: Riverhead Books: New York, 2012. Print.

Bernard-Donals, Michael; Glejzer, Richard (eds.). Witnessing the Disaster. Essays on Representation and the Holocaust.Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. Print.

Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience. Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Print.

Dawidowicz, Lucy S. A Holocaust Reader. Springfield. N.J.: Behrman House, Inc. Publishers (Library of Jewish Studies), 1976. Print. Hendrix, Jenny. “Lost and Saved”. Los Angeles Review of Books. 27 Feb. 2012. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/lost-and-saved/. Web 30 March 2016.

Howe, Irving. World of Our Fathers. The Journey of East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. Washington Square, New York: New York University Press. 2005. Print.

Hunt, Samantha. “Adaptation: An Interview with Ramona Ausubel.” The Paris Review. 7 June 2012. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/06/07/adaptation-an-interview-with-ramona-ausubel/. Web. 20 April 2015.

Rothberg, Michael. Traumatic Realism. The Demands of Holocaust Representation. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Print.