No Return Address : : A Memoir of Displacement / / Anca Vlasopolos.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Vlasopolos, Anca,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2000]; ©2000
• Year of Publication: 2000
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (240 p.) :; 14 halftones

No Return Address is a vivid memoir of a life in exile and a poignant meditation on pleasure and loss, repression and transgression, and the complexities of love under harsh human conditions. In recounting her life's journey from Romania to Paris and Brussels, then on to the United States, Anca Vlasopolos writes movingly of the peculiar attributes of displacement in the contemporary world-the hyphenated, ambiguous identities; the purgatory in which immigrants await transfer to another country; the mysterious nostalgia for places and events dimly recalled. Throughout, she describes the constant search for a place to truly call home.Vlasopolos renders a clear and loving portrait of her mother, an Auschwitz survivor courageously raising a young girl by herself after the death of her husband, a political dissident. She details their years of limbo in Brussels and Paris and of settlement in Detroit, Michigan, as well as her ultimate decision to identify the United States as home, inspired by the strong multicultural quality that allows so many others to do the same.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Chronology -- ONE: Mouthfuls -- TWO: Gatekeepers -- THREE: Out of the Mouth -- FOUR: The Vocabulary of Faith -- FIVE: Mud Miracles -- SIX: To Eat or Not to Eat -- SEVEN: Bucharest -- EIGHT: Contingencies -- NINE: Telling Tales -- TEN: Growing Boys -- ELEVEN: Paris -- TWELVE: Brussels -- THIRTEEN: Walls -- FOURTEEN: Frankfurt Passage -- FIFTEEN: Misplacing Detroit -- SIXTEEN: Where All the Lights Were Bright -- SEVENTEEN: Variations on the Pastoral -- EIGHTEEN: Sub-Urban Skies -- NINETEEN: Endings, Continuities -- TWENTY: Returns