The travel motif in contemporary Latin American Jewish literature

The purpose of this work is to study: Tiempo al tiempo (1984), by the Peruvian Isaac Goldemberg; Colombina descubierta (1991), by the Venezuelan Alicia Freilich Segal; Mujeres pudorosas (1993), by the Argentinian Silvia Plager; El alma al diablo (1994), by the Argentinian Marcelo Birmajer; and La piel del alma (1996), by the Uruguayan Teresa Porzecanski as Latin American Jewish novels. I have selected these works written by Jewish authors because they present Jewish themes or subjects. At the same time, I examine the literary aspects that allow us to consider them as Latin American, and to illuminate their connections with national, Latin American and universal literature. In other words, I examine both components of the diptych in the phenomenon known as "Latin American-Jewish literature." In order to achieve this goal, I concentrate on the analysis of the literary travel motif in these novels, in its multiple manifestations (real and imaginary, literal and symbolic travel), and its connections with Jewish and Latin American issues. Selecting the literary travel motif as the focus of my analysis has allowed me to observe a level of cohesion among different works. Thus, I study Tiempo al tiempo as a novel of search of identity, as a manifestation of the literary travel motif. Based on the theoretical frame of the Latin American new historical novel I analyze Colombina descubierta as a journey into the past in order to examine conflicts in the present. I show that in Mujeres pudorosas the protagonists' travels represent their attempts to transcend their geographic, personal, social and intellectual milieu in a process of search of expansion of those limitations through love, eroticism, memory, literary creation. I demonstrate that El alma al diablo belongs to the genre Bildungsroman or apprenticeship novel, as a type of travel novel. Finally, I study the travel motif in La piel del alma from different points of view: journey in space and in time; internal trip of self-awareness of the protagonists; persecution and exile; search for a home.