Ilan Stavans (April 7, 1961)

Ilan Stavans was born in Mexico City where he grew up in a multi lingual environment: Yiddish, Spanish, Hebrew, later English. He has published essays, books, and critical editions in a variety of areas of literary studies, particularly in Latin American literature and “Spanglish,” language of New York and other homes of Latino immigrants. Last fall, I heard him lecture and had a very brief conversation with him, where I mentioned that his anthologies had introduced me to the fiction of Latin American Jews, and that I was also interested in their cooking. He said as a child he had no idea that the latkes with mole that his family ate were different than the latkes eaten by other Jews for Hanukkah.