Maurice Sendak (June 10, 1928)

I once saw an exhibit at the Skirball Center in L.A. about In the Night Kitchen; they showed the milk-carton landscape juxtaposed with Sendak’s native Brooklyn skyline. And I was made aware, this is a Jewish writer when I’ve only thought I was reading imaginary children’s stories. In Where the Wild Things Are, writes Illan Stavans, “Jewishness is implied … Max inhabits his own universe; he resists outside authority; he arrives in alien lands but assimilates the inhabitants’ culture so well that he becomes a leader. Most of all, he longs for a return to his origins, the only place he feels truly at home.” (In “Vilde Khaye,” Pakn Treger, Fall, 2010, number 62, p. 16-19)

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.