The Yiddish Book Center's

Wexler Oral History Project

A growing collection of in-depth interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds, whose stories about the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture offer a rich and complex chronicle of Jewish identity.

Ilan Stavans, a Mexican-Born Descendent of Shtetl-Dwellers

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Ilan Stavans, academic and writer, describes how his Ashkenazi grandparents came to settle in Mexico City, and how history contrived to have two waves of Jewish emigration to the region at that time, one from the dissolving Ottoman Empire and the other from Eastern Europe.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Ilan Stavans.

This excerpt is in English.

Ilan Stavans was born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1961.