Description

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Jewish Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Antena. The narrator of TELA DE SEVOYA / ONIONCLOTH travels to Bulgaria, searching for traces of her Sephardic heritage. Her journey becomes an autobiographical and imagined exploration of childhood, diaspora, and the possibilities of her family language: Ladino or Judeo- Spanish, the living tongue spoken by descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. Memoir, poetry, storytelling, songs, and dreams are interwoven in this visionary text--this tela or cloth that brings the past to life, if only for a moment, and that looks at the present though the lens of history.

In 2012, TELA DE SEVOYA / ONIONCLOTH was awarded one of Mexico's most prestigious literary prizes, the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia, whose previous winners include Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Bellatin.

TELA DE SEVOYA / ONIONCLOTH is an absolutely extraordinary text... it successfully joins past and present, life and death, memory and imagination.--Juan Gelman

Readers will find, through this tale of the relationship between a girl and her embittered grandmother, an entirely singular world narrated from the point of view of an 'I' whose range exceeds the territory of any private life.--Mario Bellatin