Reviewed by:

• Eastern European Jewish American Narratives, 1890–1930 by Dana Mihăilescu
• Cristina Stanciu (bio)

How did people who faced various forms of suffering—from the pogroms in Eastern Europe to the legal and political discrimination in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century and beyond—maintain their humanity through disinterested acts of care and ethical responsibility? This question is at the heart of Dana Mihăilescu’s Eastern European Jewish American Narratives, 1890–1930, published in the Lexington Books series Studies in Modern Jewish History, Historiography, and Memory. This is an erudite and compelling study of both well-known and lesser-known Eastern European Jewish authors in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. For students of Jewish American history and culture, this is a particularly rich period; Mihăilescu adds a lucid and necessary perspective to studies of modern Jewish subjectivity in the United States by drawing on the work not only of well-known writers such as Mary Antin, Abraham Cahan, and Anzia Yezierska, but also others who may still be obscure to many readers. In fact, one of the major contributions of this study is its comparative framework and the recovery of significant literary and cultural work by immigrant writers from Romania, a gap in contemporary scholarship Mihăilescu fills skillfully by drawing on both US and Romanian archives. Her book, therefore, does the important work of recovering several Jewish American writers originally from Romania, such as M. E. Ravage, Konrad Bercovici, and Maurice Samuel, heretofore little known to many readers of both Jewish American and American multiethnic literature. [End Page 205]

One of the study’s merits is its focus on what the author calls “ethical agency” in examining what she terms “the dilemmas associated with Eastern European Jewish American identity” as “a critical element in fashioning modern subjectivity” (xi). Structuring her argument around what she calls “the contingency of identity,” Mihăilescu adds to ongoing conversations about Jewish “politics of ambivalence” (Eric Homberger) and “performing Americanness” (Catherine Rottenberg) by reading this body of work through what she calls an “ethics out of contingency.” Drawing on philosophers such as Axel Honneth, Emmanuel Levinas, Judith Butler, and Adriana Cavarero, the author offers an ethical approach where “power fields, strategy, and performativity represent forms of a struggle for recognition in the name of ethical dilemmas and not merely of self-preserving interests” (xiii). Mihăilescu grounds her work in three distinct theoretical sets of approaches: feminist theory and gender studies, ethnic studies, and multilingual, multi- and transcultural approaches. In this framework of analysis, the categories contingency (as reliance on the unknowable) and affect (as reliance on human bonds and emotions) are at the center of her investigation of Eastern European Jewish writers in the United States whose ethical agency reveals not only a critique of the social milieus coeval to these writers, but also a sense of responsibility for the other’s vulnerability. As Mihăilescu argues throughout, “the struggle for recognition in the name of moral injuries and the individual responsibility for the other are important pillars in narratives by early twentieth century Eastern European Jewish American writers” (15).

Organized around an introduction, two parts comprising five chapters, and a conclusion, Eastern European Jewish American Narratives, 1890–1930 examines shifting patterns of identity, between Eastern European, Jewish, and Jewish American, among both Jews native to the Pale of Settlement and Jews from neighboring Romania—a lesser-known yet rich, multilingual archive the author navigates with wit and authority. Part 2 in particular is especially poignant in offering what the author calls an “alternative ethical reading” of the writers’ struggles with both power and recognition. Mihăilescu notes that, once in the United States, Eastern European Jews discover “the contingent in themselves,” which she explains as their own “opacity and vulnerable humanity represented by a vacillating ethical agency” (xvii). Tracing what she calls “a new sense of ethical agency” characterizing Jewish identity in the United States in narratives by Mary Antin, M. E. Ravage, Maurice Samuel, Konrad Bercovici, and Anzia Yezierska, Mihăilescu shows comparatively...

审核人：

• 东欧犹太人美国叙事，1890-1930 年作者 Dana Mihăilescu
• 克里斯蒂娜·斯坦丘（Cristina Stanciu）（生物）

面临各种形式苦难的人们——从东欧的大屠杀到 20 世纪初及以后美国的法律和政治歧视——如何通过无私的关怀行为和道德责任来维持他们的人性？这个问题是 Dana Mihăilescu 的东欧犹太人美国叙事的核心，1890-1930，发表在列克星敦图书系列研究现代犹太历史、史学和记忆中。这是对 20 世纪初美国著名和鲜为人知的东欧犹太作家的博学和引人入胜的研究。对于美国犹太历史和文化的学生来说，这是一个特别丰富的时期；Mihăilescu 不仅借鉴了 Mary Antin、Abraham Cahan 和 Anzia Yezierska 等知名作家的作品，而且还借鉴了其他可能仍不清楚的人的作品，为美国现代犹太主体性研究增添了清晰而必要的视角。许多读者。事实上，这项研究的主要贡献之一是它的比较框架和罗马尼亚移民作家对重要文学和文化作品的恢复，Mihăilescu 通过借鉴美国和罗马尼亚的档案，巧妙地填补了当代学术的空白。因此，她的书做了重要的工作，恢复了几位来自罗马尼亚的犹太裔美国作家，例如 ME Ravage、Konrad Bercovici 和 Maurice Samuel，迄今为止，许多犹太裔美国人和美国多民族文学的读者都鲜为人知。[第205页结束]

该研究的优点之一是在研究她所说的“与东欧犹太裔美国人身份相关的困境”作为“塑造现代主体性的一个关键因素”（xi）时，它关注了作者所谓的“伦理机构”。围绕她所谓的“身份的偶然性”构建她的论点，Mihăilescu 通过通过她所谓的“出于偶然的道德。” 作者借鉴了 Axel Honneth、Emmanuel Levinas、Judith Butler 和 Adriana Cavarero 等哲学家的观点，提出了一种道德方法，其中“权力场、战略、和表演性代表了以道德困境的名义而不仅仅是为了自我保护利益而争取承认的斗争形式”（xiii）。Mihăilescu 将她的工作建立在三个不同的理论方法集上：女权主义理论和性别研究、种族研究以及多语言、多文化和跨文化方法。在这个分析框架中，类别偶然性（作为对不可知的依赖）和情感（作为对人类纽带和情感的依赖）是她对美国东欧犹太作家调查的中心作家，也是对对方脆弱的责任感。正如 Mihăilescu 一直认为的那样，“以道德伤害的名义争取承认的斗争和对他人的个人责任是 20 世纪早期东欧犹太裔美国作家叙事的重要支柱”（15）。

围绕介绍组织，两部分组成五章，和结论，东欧犹太裔美国人叙事，1890-1930考察了东欧、犹太人和犹太裔美国人之间的身份变化模式，包括居住在 Pale of Settlement 的犹太人和来自邻国罗马尼亚的犹太人——作者以机智和权威浏览了一个鲜为人知但丰富的多语言档案。尤其是第 2 部分特别尖锐地提供了作者所谓的“另类伦理阅读”，讲述了作家在权力和认可方面的斗争。Mihăilescu 指出，一旦在美国，东欧犹太人就会发现“他们自己的偶然性”，她将其解释为他们自己的“由摇摆不定的道德机构所代表的不透明和脆弱的人性”（xvii）。在 Mary Antin、ME Ravage、Maurice Samuel、Konrad Bercovici 的叙述中追溯她所谓的“一种新的道德代理意识”，以表征美国的犹太人身份，