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Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language
This remarkable book is Eva Hoffman's personal story of her experiences as an emigre who loses and remakes her identity in a new land and translates her sense of self into a new culture and a different language.
The condition of exile is an exaggeration of the process of change and loss that many people experience as they grow and mature, leaving behind the innocence of childhood. Eva Hoffman spent her early years in Cracow, among family friends who, like her parents, had escaped the Holocaust and were skeptical of the newly imposed Communist state. Hoffman's parents managed to immigrate to Canada in the 1950s, where Eva was old enough to feel like a stranger--bland food, a quieter life, and schoolmates who hardly knew where Poland was. Still, there were neighbors who knew something of Old World ways, and a piano teacher who was classically Middle European in his neurotic enthusiasm for music. Her true exile came in college in Texas, where she found herself among people who were frightened by and hostile to her foreignness. Later, at Harvard, Hoffman found herself initially alienated by her burgeoning intellectualism; her parents found it difficult to comprehend. Her sense of perpetual otherness was extended by encounters with childhood friends who had escaped Cracow to grow up in Israel, rather than Canada or the United States, and were preoccupied with soldiers, not scholars. Lost in Translation is a moving memoir that takes the specific experience of the exile and humanizes it to such a degree that it becomes relevant to the lives of a wider group of readers.
The condition of exile is an exaggeration of the process of change and loss that many people experience as they grow and mature, leaving behind the innocence of childhood. Eva Hoffman spent her early years in Cracow, among family friends who, like her parents, had escaped the Holocaust and were skeptical of the newly imposed Communist state. Hoffman's parents managed to immigrate to Canada in the 1950s, where Eva was old enough to feel like a stranger--bland food, a quieter life, and schoolmates who hardly knew where Poland was. Still, there were neighbors who knew something of Old World ways, and a piano teacher who was classically Middle European in his neurotic enthusiasm for music. Her true exile came in college in Texas, where she found herself among people who were frightened by and hostile to her foreignness. Later, at Harvard, Hoffman found herself initially alienated by her burgeoning intellectualism; her parents found it difficult to comprehend. Her sense of perpetual otherness was extended by encounters with childhood friends who had escaped Cracow to grow up in Israel, rather than Canada or the United States, and were preoccupied with soldiers, not scholars. Lost in Translation is a moving memoir that takes the specific experience of the exile and humanizes it to such a degree that it becomes relevant to the lives of a wider group of readers.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 23, 1989
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2832 people want to read
About the author
Eva Hoffman
69 books102 followersEva Hoffman is a writer and academic. She was born Ewa Wydra July 1, 1945 in Cracow, Poland after her Jewish parents survived the Holocaust by hiding in the Ukraine. In 1959, during the Cold War, the thirteen years old Eva, her nine years old sister "Alinka" and her parents immigrated to Vancouver, Canada, where her name has been changed to Eva. Upon graduating from high school she received a scholarship and studied English literature at Rice University, Texas in 1966, the Yale School of Music (1967-68), and Harvard University, where she received a Ph.D. in English and American literature in 1974.
Eva Hoffmann has been a professor of literature and creative writing at various institutions, such as Columbia University, the University of Minnesota, and Tufts. From 1979 to 1990, she worked as an editor and writer at The New York Times, serving as senior editor of “The Book Review” from 1987 to 1990. In 1990, she received the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1992, the Guggenheim Fellowship for General Nonfiction, as well as the Whiting Writers' Award. In 2000, Eva Hoffman has been the Year 2000 Una Lecturer at the Townsend Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2008, she was awarded an honorary DLitt by the University of Warwick. Eva leads a seminar in memoir once every two years as a part of CUNY Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing.
She now lives in London.
Her sister, Dr. Alina Wydra is a registered psychologist working in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Hoffman
Eva Hoffmann has been a professor of literature and creative writing at various institutions, such as Columbia University, the University of Minnesota, and Tufts. From 1979 to 1990, she worked as an editor and writer at The New York Times, serving as senior editor of “The Book Review” from 1987 to 1990. In 1990, she received the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1992, the Guggenheim Fellowship for General Nonfiction, as well as the Whiting Writers' Award. In 2000, Eva Hoffman has been the Year 2000 Una Lecturer at the Townsend Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2008, she was awarded an honorary DLitt by the University of Warwick. Eva leads a seminar in memoir once every two years as a part of CUNY Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing.
She now lives in London.
Her sister, Dr. Alina Wydra is a registered psychologist working in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Hoffman
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 232 reviews
March 23, 2021
I can think of only one other book I started in one decade and finished in another: Doris Lessing's science fiction book Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta. The reason, though, is entirely different. That book had traumatized me. This one had simply been left behind in the onslaught of reading demands. I was part of a time-limited group reading a book every two weeks and had fallen behind.
Recently I heard a book presentation in which an author elaborated on her extensive research to get the setting of her historical novel right. Similarly, another book I read recently went into great detail about dress fashions during the era of her book. Lots of authors emphasize local color. Yet despite all that emphasis on researching the background, they fail to research how the people saw things and how they experienced themselves. They don't even know they need to.
Are people everywhere (and anytime) just the same? Eva Wydra Hoffman says no. People everywhere and anytime are not just the same. This book gives witness against such an assertion.
The first part of this book describes the author's life in Poland as a daughter of tough-minded Holocaust survivors who end up in Cracow because their hometown was going to be in the USSR.
Here is an example of how she describes her parents:
So different from conformist 1950s America!
Well, actually, Vancouver, Canada, is where her family ends up. She's ripped untimely from her native land and her childhood, when, at age 13, her family has to leave while the leaving is good. At that point the book changes. No longer is she describing the vivid experiences of her childhood in Cracow and environs, and not only has the family ended up in whitebread America -- well, Vancouver, Canada -- but she's also bereft of language by which to paint in vivid colors and make reality. Polish, unused, begins to atrophy while English is a primitive sprout. No wonder she experiences an intense version of nostalgia.
She and her mom meet some boring neighbors, stiff and blank, who talk about the weather, who seem to be of another species than she knew in Poland.
Humor takes years, both getting jokes and telling them. With her teenage friends she's reduced to faking it.
A little later,
See how she writes?
She has a wondrous, Proust-like recall of details, especially the landscape of her own mind. Although she's often writing about what makes her, as an immigrant, different, the odd one out -- meaning that everyone else shares something in common that she lacks -- her insights are likely to provoke "aha" moments of insight in the reader -- a contradiction in terms that disproves what she's telling us at the same time confirming it.
...Which is why I think we're all immigrants, to a degree. We all have that conscience, that inner police force, seeing to it that we conform to the prevailing norms. I acknowledge the "to a degree" part, meaning I know that some of us are already closer to those prevailing norms, and when not in sync, can more nearly read them. Yet we understand and resonate to these powerful insights from someone who supposedly is the outsider.
She does conquer language, eventually becoming able to dream in English and react in English. She gets a scholarship to Rice University in Houston, eventually progresses to working for the New York Times, and, for good measure, has written beaucoup books.
But I'm not sure she solves the happiness conundrum. Part I of her book is "Paradise" and Part 2 remains "Exile," even though Part 3 is "The New World."
This immigration thing ain't for sissies.
4 1/2 stars
Recently I heard a book presentation in which an author elaborated on her extensive research to get the setting of her historical novel right. Similarly, another book I read recently went into great detail about dress fashions during the era of her book. Lots of authors emphasize local color. Yet despite all that emphasis on researching the background, they fail to research how the people saw things and how they experienced themselves. They don't even know they need to.
Are people everywhere (and anytime) just the same? Eva Wydra Hoffman says no. People everywhere and anytime are not just the same. This book gives witness against such an assertion.
The first part of this book describes the author's life in Poland as a daughter of tough-minded Holocaust survivors who end up in Cracow because their hometown was going to be in the USSR.
Here is an example of how she describes her parents:
...No matter how many accoutrements of middle-class life they'll later acquire, my parents never quite buy into the work ethic. Life has been irrational enough for them to believe in the power of the gamble -- in games of luck and risk -- more than in orderly progress. Anyway, there is no such thing as as orderly progress in the Socialist People's Republic. It's clear enough to everybody that you don't get anywhere by trying. Working hard in your "chosen profession," when that profession is most often chosen for you, when there's no reward and no possibility of improving your conditions, and when anything may happen tomorrow, is for fools or schlemiels. The System -- compounded by the Poles' perennial skepticism about all systems -- produces a nation of ironists and gamblers.
So different from conformist 1950s America!
Well, actually, Vancouver, Canada, is where her family ends up. She's ripped untimely from her native land and her childhood, when, at age 13, her family has to leave while the leaving is good. At that point the book changes. No longer is she describing the vivid experiences of her childhood in Cracow and environs, and not only has the family ended up in whitebread America -- well, Vancouver, Canada -- but she's also bereft of language by which to paint in vivid colors and make reality. Polish, unused, begins to atrophy while English is a primitive sprout. No wonder she experiences an intense version of nostalgia.
She and her mom meet some boring neighbors, stiff and blank, who talk about the weather, who seem to be of another species than she knew in Poland.
...Even the simplest adjectives sow confusion in my mind.; English kindliness has a whole system of morality behind it, a system that makes "kindness" an entirely positive virtue. Polish kindness has the tiniest element of irony. Besides, I'm beginning to feel the tug of prohibition, in English, against uncharitable words. In Polish, you can call someone an idiot without particularly harsh feelings and with the zest of a strong judgment. Yes, in Polish these people might tend toward "silly" and "dull" -- but I force myself toward "kindly" and "pleasant." The cultural unconscious is beginning to exercise its subliminal influence.
Humor takes years, both getting jokes and telling them. With her teenage friends she's reduced to faking it.
A little later,
...I have an active vocabulary of about six hundered words, but it doesn't occur to me that I should mince any of them. I want to tell Canadians how boring they are.
See how she writes?
She has a wondrous, Proust-like recall of details, especially the landscape of her own mind. Although she's often writing about what makes her, as an immigrant, different, the odd one out -- meaning that everyone else shares something in common that she lacks -- her insights are likely to provoke "aha" moments of insight in the reader -- a contradiction in terms that disproves what she's telling us at the same time confirming it.
...Which is why I think we're all immigrants, to a degree. We all have that conscience, that inner police force, seeing to it that we conform to the prevailing norms. I acknowledge the "to a degree" part, meaning I know that some of us are already closer to those prevailing norms, and when not in sync, can more nearly read them. Yet we understand and resonate to these powerful insights from someone who supposedly is the outsider.
She does conquer language, eventually becoming able to dream in English and react in English. She gets a scholarship to Rice University in Houston, eventually progresses to working for the New York Times, and, for good measure, has written beaucoup books.
But I'm not sure she solves the happiness conundrum. Part I of her book is "Paradise" and Part 2 remains "Exile," even though Part 3 is "The New World."
This immigration thing ain't for sissies.
4 1/2 stars
February 7, 2014
Came across this book in a weird way: the first page used to be a Critical Reading passage in one of the old SAT practice books. I'd always liked the passage (though the questions were unrepresentatively easy), but this goes back a number of years. Went to Book Revue in Huntington, browsed through literary remainders, and read the back cover. "Hmmm," I thought. "Wonder if this is the phantom reading passage?" Indeed.
Hoffman often writes beautifully and always thoughtfully; I sort of struggle between three and four stars here, FWIW. I enjoyed the first part of the book much more than later parts, maybe b/c I simply liked her better as a person in the early parts. Her self-conscious attempts to make herself as an intellectual, and the sample conversations with her New York and Cambridge friends, struck me as sometimes irritating and precious. That and the first part just felt truer. I have a pedantic streak, and I couldn't help noticing the following: she describes listening to Janis Joplin during her years at Rice (1963-1967). I'm thinking probably not, since Joplin's career didn't take off until the summer of 1967. That I can forgive, because the time frame is close enough. What I had more trouble with is a reconstructed party scene from 1979 in which she's listening to Madonna. Na, mang, not in 1979, she wasn't. She also describes writing an article on her computer: not something your typical East Coast struggling writer would have in 1979. In short, she fudges some of the cultural details, and given her focus on atmosphere, it made me question the truthfulness of the whole scene.
Also, as compelling as the subject matter of language and identity may be, I was simply more interested in her parents and sister, and all of her Polish acquaintance, than in her relationship with language. I wanted to know how her father, that resourceful man, handled his less than brilliant career in Vancouver after Eva went off to college. I wanted to know what her mother's life was like. They had much more quiddity than did her college roommate or boyfriend or her eventual ex-husband, none of whom she seemed particularly fond of.
Hoffman often writes beautifully and always thoughtfully; I sort of struggle between three and four stars here, FWIW. I enjoyed the first part of the book much more than later parts, maybe b/c I simply liked her better as a person in the early parts. Her self-conscious attempts to make herself as an intellectual, and the sample conversations with her New York and Cambridge friends, struck me as sometimes irritating and precious. That and the first part just felt truer. I have a pedantic streak, and I couldn't help noticing the following: she describes listening to Janis Joplin during her years at Rice (1963-1967). I'm thinking probably not, since Joplin's career didn't take off until the summer of 1967. That I can forgive, because the time frame is close enough. What I had more trouble with is a reconstructed party scene from 1979 in which she's listening to Madonna. Na, mang, not in 1979, she wasn't. She also describes writing an article on her computer: not something your typical East Coast struggling writer would have in 1979. In short, she fudges some of the cultural details, and given her focus on atmosphere, it made me question the truthfulness of the whole scene.
Also, as compelling as the subject matter of language and identity may be, I was simply more interested in her parents and sister, and all of her Polish acquaintance, than in her relationship with language. I wanted to know how her father, that resourceful man, handled his less than brilliant career in Vancouver after Eva went off to college. I wanted to know what her mother's life was like. They had much more quiddity than did her college roommate or boyfriend or her eventual ex-husband, none of whom she seemed particularly fond of.
April 8, 2009
I just read this book for a humanities class centered around the idea of translation, literally and metaphorically. It is the author's memoir of growing up in post-war Poland and immigrating to America as a teenager, which is interesting enough for the insight into Polish culture and philosophy provided. But beyond that, this book is exciting because it is nothing like what you would expect of an immigrant story-- she focuses her story around the role of language in experience, and the effects of shifting from one language to another. More broadly speaking, this book is a reflection on the ways language of any kind, even a native language, is a 'translation' of our selves, our experiences, our reality, our essence. She balances a genuine love of language against the truth she experiences as an immigrant that all language, all communicate, is essentially a mediation, creating distance between experience and our understanding of it. She raises fascinating ideas and questions, things I had never thought about before and would probably never have thought about except for reading this. I will be thinking about this book for some time, I predict.
Stylistically, this book is beautiful. It is written in first-person present tense, which normally annoys me to death, but Hoffman carries it off with intensely lyrical grace. Her analysis of American culture and the American 'psyche' is fascinating, completely unlike any other I've read, and touches some important truths. I take issue with her thoughts occasionally-- she's a secular Jewish New York intellectual type-- but the book is so captivating and rewarding that it is quite easy to put up with a few minor things. All in all, I recommend it heartily.
Stylistically, this book is beautiful. It is written in first-person present tense, which normally annoys me to death, but Hoffman carries it off with intensely lyrical grace. Her analysis of American culture and the American 'psyche' is fascinating, completely unlike any other I've read, and touches some important truths. I take issue with her thoughts occasionally-- she's a secular Jewish New York intellectual type-- but the book is so captivating and rewarding that it is quite easy to put up with a few minor things. All in all, I recommend it heartily.
September 29, 2018
I need some time to digest this stunningly brilliant and immensely wise memoir that delves into the complexities of origins, language, and identity. The most insightful and rich book I've read in ages--I'm flat-out awestruck.
November 5, 2013
The most thoughtful book I’ve read in some time, a highly introspective memoir that is about so many, many things, especially language and its relationship to self. Hoffman emigrates from Poland to Canada at age 13 and her insights speak into the life of anyone who has experienced a fundamental life-rupture after which there is no unity possible, but only a new composite self – she speaks to the way that it’s possible for us to say “I am here now” in a new experience, after we have lost ourselves for awhile. A beautiful book. Some moments I loved:
“It is a sunny fall afternoon and I’m engaged in one of my favorite pastimes—picking chestnuts. I’m playing alone under the spreading, leafy, protective tree. My mother is sitting on a bench nearby, rocking the buggy in which my sister is asleep. The city, beyond the lacy wall of trees, is humming with gentle noises. The sun has just passed its highest point and is warming me with intense, oblique rays. I pick up a reddish brown chestnut, and suddenly, through its warm skin, I feel the beat as if of a heart. But the beat is also in everything around me, and everything pulsates and shimmers as if it were coursing with the blood of life. Stooping under the tree, I’m holding life in my hand, and I am in the center of a harmonious, vibrating transparency. For that moment, I know everything there is to know. I have stumbled into the very center of plenitude, and I hold myself still with fulfillment, before the knowledge of my knowledge escapes me.” (41-2)
198-9 “No matter what happens to me, I think, there will always be this. There will always be landscapes, and I’ll always have the liberty to breathe them in, the wherewithal to contemplate them. I’ll always have the freedom of my insignificance. Even this empty road throbs with the silence of my own experience. I need not be so afraid.” (reminds me of Etty Hillesum)
About becoming an artist, a musician, but true for any artist: “One’s fingers can become boneless conduits only if they’ve been made very strong first.” 70
271: “If all neurosis is a form of repression, then surely, the denial of suffering, and of helplessness, is also a form of neurosis. Surely, all our attempts to escape sorrow twist themselves into the specific, acrid pain of self-suppression. And if that is so, then a culture that insists on cheerfulness and staying in control is a culture that—in one of those ironies that prevails in the unruly realm of the inner life—propagates its own kind of pain.
“Perhaps perversely, I sometimes wish for that older kind of suffering—the capacity and the time for a patient listening to the winds of love and hate that can blow you like a reed, for that long descent into yourself in which you touch bottom and recognize the poor, two-forked creature that we all are.”
“It is a sunny fall afternoon and I’m engaged in one of my favorite pastimes—picking chestnuts. I’m playing alone under the spreading, leafy, protective tree. My mother is sitting on a bench nearby, rocking the buggy in which my sister is asleep. The city, beyond the lacy wall of trees, is humming with gentle noises. The sun has just passed its highest point and is warming me with intense, oblique rays. I pick up a reddish brown chestnut, and suddenly, through its warm skin, I feel the beat as if of a heart. But the beat is also in everything around me, and everything pulsates and shimmers as if it were coursing with the blood of life. Stooping under the tree, I’m holding life in my hand, and I am in the center of a harmonious, vibrating transparency. For that moment, I know everything there is to know. I have stumbled into the very center of plenitude, and I hold myself still with fulfillment, before the knowledge of my knowledge escapes me.” (41-2)
198-9 “No matter what happens to me, I think, there will always be this. There will always be landscapes, and I’ll always have the liberty to breathe them in, the wherewithal to contemplate them. I’ll always have the freedom of my insignificance. Even this empty road throbs with the silence of my own experience. I need not be so afraid.” (reminds me of Etty Hillesum)
About becoming an artist, a musician, but true for any artist: “One’s fingers can become boneless conduits only if they’ve been made very strong first.” 70
271: “If all neurosis is a form of repression, then surely, the denial of suffering, and of helplessness, is also a form of neurosis. Surely, all our attempts to escape sorrow twist themselves into the specific, acrid pain of self-suppression. And if that is so, then a culture that insists on cheerfulness and staying in control is a culture that—in one of those ironies that prevails in the unruly realm of the inner life—propagates its own kind of pain.
“Perhaps perversely, I sometimes wish for that older kind of suffering—the capacity and the time for a patient listening to the winds of love and hate that can blow you like a reed, for that long descent into yourself in which you touch bottom and recognize the poor, two-forked creature that we all are.”
December 22, 2022
I had to read this book for my English a few years ago. My little sister just read it (since she is now in that class), and it brought back some... memories.
While far from the worst thing I read for my English class, I absolutely despised this book.
Ewa (or Eva, as she is later called) is an incredibly dislikable protagonist. She is selfish, stuck-up, ungrateful, and unwilling to ever change her mind on anything. She thinks that insults and name-calling constitutes a logical argument. At some age younger than thirteen, she plays "sex games" with some boy she's grown up with. AND SHE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ANY SEMBLANCE OF A CHARACTER ARC!!!
Language: I would expect that level of profanity out of a sailor, not a professor
Sexual content: at younger than thirteen she plays "sex games" with some neighbor boy. Need I say more?
In conclusion, read this book if you can stand ungrateful, conceited protagonists who refuse to change. Or I guess if you are forced to read it for English.
While far from the worst thing I read for my English class, I absolutely despised this book.
Ewa (or Eva, as she is later called) is an incredibly dislikable protagonist. She is selfish, stuck-up, ungrateful, and unwilling to ever change her mind on anything. She thinks that insults and name-calling constitutes a logical argument. At some age younger than thirteen, she plays "sex games" with some boy she's grown up with. AND SHE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ANY SEMBLANCE OF A CHARACTER ARC!!!
Language: I would expect that level of profanity out of a sailor, not a professor
Sexual content: at younger than thirteen she plays "sex games" with some neighbor boy. Need I say more?
In conclusion, read this book if you can stand ungrateful, conceited protagonists who refuse to change. Or I guess if you are forced to read it for English.
January 8, 2015
This book wasn't easy to find. It was first published in 1989 and I finally found an old paperback copy at a small library near my city. And in many ways this did seem old-fashioned. Today's young readers are not as interested in stories about people who lived through and raised families after the Holocaust. The writing itself is richly layered but maybe because of that, it is not an easy read. The author painstakingly takes us on a tour of her life as seen through the lens of her experience of immigration and assimilation.
Although the subtitle is "A Life in a New Language," the book is about much more than that. I thought the book was going to be about the differences between English and Polish, or what it's like to learn a new language, and there is some of that. But mostly it's about identity, about what it's like to lose one and have to fabricate another. She writes about her adjustment to life in Canada and the United States, about the generation gap between her parents and her and her sister, about the different values and outlooks they have, and about how she herself has learned to move beyond cultural differences to a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.
Although the subtitle is "A Life in a New Language," the book is about much more than that. I thought the book was going to be about the differences between English and Polish, or what it's like to learn a new language, and there is some of that. But mostly it's about identity, about what it's like to lose one and have to fabricate another. She writes about her adjustment to life in Canada and the United States, about the generation gap between her parents and her and her sister, about the different values and outlooks they have, and about how she herself has learned to move beyond cultural differences to a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.
March 28, 2011
This is a special book but I wonder if, at times, it is a little too heavy and over-cooked - hence my three stars instead of more! This autobiographical memoir deals with Hoffman’s emigration from Cracow, Poland to North America at the age of thirteen. I have read other works by Hoffman, namely Shtetl, and finds that she deals with both culture and the Jewish exodus from parts of Europe more than well and in an extremely educational manner. The sub-title to this book is “A Life in a New Language” and this forms Hoffman’s observations as she continues to compare and contrast life, experiences and culture between the old world of Poland and various settlements of the North American and Canadian landscapes. Hoffman is a gifted, eloquent and talented writer. She definitely writes to the educated palate about her experience and creates vivid imagery whilst recounting memories and observations. Although I adore literary and expansive writing, I do wonder if Hoffman however ‘overwrites’ certain cultural experiences immersing the reader too deeply in her own personal world a little too repetitively. In the end, Hoffman leaves the reader with an affectionate vision of Poland whilst admitting that she is possibly too Westernised / Americanised to every fully spiritually return to her native heritage in her later years. I read widely on Jewish history, exodus and diaspora and this book of Hoffman’s memoirs certainly adds a very personal touch to my prior reading and knowledge of this area. At times, I desperately wanted Hoffman to ‘write quicker’, be less flowery and communicate more directly and rapidly to me as a reader rather than by expanding and maximising tiny details. If you have the time to read this book then go for it – be prepared to be patient as Hoffman flows into dissecting the nuclei of all matters socio-cultural – but if you love culture, travel, history and language then you are bound to steadily enjoy and find it informative and worthwhile.
February 1, 2022
In 2018 I read Eva Hoffman's amazing novel, Appationata, about being a musician in times of political upheaval. It contained the best writing about both playing and listening to music I have ever read.
Lost in Translation is her memoir. She and her family emigrated to Canada from Poland when she was 13 years old. She writes about her love for Cracow where she spent her childhood, the loss and upheaval that left her with severe nostalgia, and how she overcame the barriers of language and culture through education and sheer bravery. She made a life out of language and reading and writing.
If you love memoirs or are writing one, I recommend this book. One of the best I have ever read.
Lost in Translation is her memoir. She and her family emigrated to Canada from Poland when she was 13 years old. She writes about her love for Cracow where she spent her childhood, the loss and upheaval that left her with severe nostalgia, and how she overcame the barriers of language and culture through education and sheer bravery. She made a life out of language and reading and writing.
If you love memoirs or are writing one, I recommend this book. One of the best I have ever read.
July 13, 2022
4.5/5
Dziękuję moim studiom, że zmusiły mnie do przeczytania tej książki ❤
Mimo że bardzo długo ją czytałam, to naprawdę ta książka dała mi do myślenia w temacie języków, szoku kulturowego, dwujęzyczności, a także wielu innych pozajęzykowych spraw. Bardzo mi się podobała, zarówno pod kątem treści, jak i sposobu pisania. Autorce udało się nawet mnie wzruszyć w niektórych momentach (i to do tego, kiedy byłam w pociągu)
Dziękuję moim studiom, że zmusiły mnie do przeczytania tej książki ❤
Mimo że bardzo długo ją czytałam, to naprawdę ta książka dała mi do myślenia w temacie języków, szoku kulturowego, dwujęzyczności, a także wielu innych pozajęzykowych spraw. Bardzo mi się podobała, zarówno pod kątem treści, jak i sposobu pisania. Autorce udało się nawet mnie wzruszyć w niektórych momentach (i to do tego, kiedy byłam w pociągu)
April 6, 2009
Overall, I enjoyed this book; I liked the strange theme about translation, and I generally like these multi-cultural, immigrant-negotiating-a-new-place stories.
I hated how reptitive she was. She writes these really interesting sentences to describe things. Like she used the term "oblique angles" to describe someone's face. I liked that, until, less than two paragraphs later, she used the exact same term to describe something completely different. And then again, a few pages later. If you write something original, it's not gonna be good if you manage to immediately turn it into a cliche in the space of a few pages!
I hated how reptitive she was. She writes these really interesting sentences to describe things. Like she used the term "oblique angles" to describe someone's face. I liked that, until, less than two paragraphs later, she used the exact same term to describe something completely different. And then again, a few pages later. If you write something original, it's not gonna be good if you manage to immediately turn it into a cliche in the space of a few pages!
May 2, 2013
This is not what I expected. Eva Hoffman writes almost nothing about learning English or living in two languages. Despite immigrating to Canada at age thirteen, she graduates as the valedictorian--and yet tells us nothing about that at all.
December 30, 2021
(Re)creating own identity, reinventing yourself, longing for "home", pains, melancholy, struggles, dreams, opportunities of a life in a new country and new language are a pretty universal experience. I too have felt what Eva Hoffman felt 60 years ago.
November 1, 2014
Eva (originally Ewa) Hoffman's autobiographical book "Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language" is the fourth great book about childhood and growing up that I have read recently. It belongs in such a distinguished company as James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", John Coetzee's "Boyhood", and Amelie Nothomb's "Loving Sabotage". It is perhaps not as deeply intellectual as Joyce's work, not as fiercely social and political as the Coetzee's book, and not as utterly charming as the Nothomb's novel, but it is a great, wise, and deep book. Of course I may be biased - the book is mainly about the contrast between Polishness (which is my ethnicity) and Americanness. I am also both a Pole and an American (meaning USian) and I can relate to most things Ms. Hoffman writes about.
The author was born in a Jewish Polish family. When the political climate became milder in Poland in the late Fifties, the family was allowed to emigrate to Canada. Ms. Hoffman was 13 at that time, which is probably the most difficult age to emigrate. The family boards the ocean liner "Batory" and they finally arrive in Vancouver, after a trans-Canada train ride.
The book is built of three parts: the first, "Paradise", is mostly about the author's childhood in Cracow, Poland. I find that part most moving as I am about the same age and I remember a bit of the late 1950s. The second part, "Exile", is about Ms. Hoffman's youth in Canada and in the US, and in the third part, "The New World", she is a young adult or a grown-up. She studies at Rice University and at Harvard, and becomes a literary critic and a writer.
There are so many wonderful passages in the book that it would take me many, many pages to quote them. Let me just quote two fragments that so aptly characterize the essence of Polishness: "Politics, like religion, is a game, except almost no one - no one we know anyway - seems to believe in it. Poles don't need demystifying philosophies to doubt all sources of power and authority". And "A culture talks most about what most bothers it: the Poles talk compulsively about the Russians and the most minute shifts of political strategy. Americans worry about who they are." How very true this is!
I find the passages about becoming immersed in a new language the most fascinating - what becoming bilingual does to one's brain and to the worldview. It is like appreciating the world and life twice as much.
Wonderful book!
Four and three quarter stars.
The author was born in a Jewish Polish family. When the political climate became milder in Poland in the late Fifties, the family was allowed to emigrate to Canada. Ms. Hoffman was 13 at that time, which is probably the most difficult age to emigrate. The family boards the ocean liner "Batory" and they finally arrive in Vancouver, after a trans-Canada train ride.
The book is built of three parts: the first, "Paradise", is mostly about the author's childhood in Cracow, Poland. I find that part most moving as I am about the same age and I remember a bit of the late 1950s. The second part, "Exile", is about Ms. Hoffman's youth in Canada and in the US, and in the third part, "The New World", she is a young adult or a grown-up. She studies at Rice University and at Harvard, and becomes a literary critic and a writer.
There are so many wonderful passages in the book that it would take me many, many pages to quote them. Let me just quote two fragments that so aptly characterize the essence of Polishness: "Politics, like religion, is a game, except almost no one - no one we know anyway - seems to believe in it. Poles don't need demystifying philosophies to doubt all sources of power and authority". And "A culture talks most about what most bothers it: the Poles talk compulsively about the Russians and the most minute shifts of political strategy. Americans worry about who they are." How very true this is!
I find the passages about becoming immersed in a new language the most fascinating - what becoming bilingual does to one's brain and to the worldview. It is like appreciating the world and life twice as much.
Wonderful book!
Four and three quarter stars.
July 13, 2007
This book was a shoe-in: descriptions of Krakow, the Polish language, reflections on bilingualism and the experience of a new culture. Hoffman writes beautifully and with remarkable insight.
Surprisingly, I felt that this book gave me more insight into Poles than Americans. I expected to hear a different perspective on American culture, and I did, but I also feel that the contrast between Polish and American women was instructive. Despite having lived in Poland for a year after graduating from college, I still held a rather stereotypical view of Polish women - that they were resigned to being wives and mothers constrained by very traditional gender roles. In reality, Hoffman taught me, Polish women are much more complex. By the time I finished reading this book, I realized that Hoffman was right: the Polish women I know are indeed intelligent, spirited, and independent, women to be admired rather than pitied.
I can't wait to read Hoffman's other memoir, about a return visit to Poland!
April 8, 2018
Ewa Hoffman's "Lost in Translation" is filled to the brim with beautifully phrased and vivid anecdotes of her childhood in Cracow, her immigration to Canada when she was thirteen, her university years in America and her settlement in New York as a New York Times editor. The immigrant experience is skilfully voiced through Hoffman's appropriation of the English language, and interweaved with the grapple of the obstacles of an American experience, identity, memory, and culture through the eyes of her Polish selfhood.
This book was on my reading list for uni.
This book was on my reading list for uni.
September 27, 2009
Snnnnnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooorrrrrrrre......
It was hard not to skim through pages and pages of long descriptions, using large words for the sake of using large words. I can imagine that this writer has so much more interesting detail to tell about moving from Poland to Canada at age 13, but she chooses instead to tell me over and over and over again how she felt isolated. I wanted detail; I wanted stories. I had neither. It eventually made me bored...
It was hard not to skim through pages and pages of long descriptions, using large words for the sake of using large words. I can imagine that this writer has so much more interesting detail to tell about moving from Poland to Canada at age 13, but she chooses instead to tell me over and over and over again how she felt isolated. I wanted detail; I wanted stories. I had neither. It eventually made me bored...
September 24, 2014
This book is about the experiences and complex thoughts, feelings, and realizations of an expatriate, and I would heavily recommend it to any expatriate—wherever from, wherever to. But I would also recommend it to any one who knows what this means:
To anyone who knows what it is to have transformed from one thing to another—the discomfort, that feeling of never being able to settle within one’s self in real, complete comfort, the unnerving feeling of being watchful within. Of being an observer, but not just an observer of the outside world and of others, but an observer of your own internal world, of the things that are supposed to just happen naturally, occur without thought, as commonplace, but to instead be painfully aware, thus never having full self-assurance, never having full comfort, never gaining that sense of self. So unlike Erikson’s toddler, who learns safety of environment and then is able to explore the outside world with confidence and delight, making it all as familiar as that first environment.
On the surface, this is a book about a girl who emigrates from Poland to Canada. She learns a new language and a new way of life. Such a plot has been done many, many times, yes? Yes, but never like this.
The reason this book is so brilliant is because Eva Hoffman conveys meticulously well-thought truths about life. To have that kind of insight—to know—is rare enough, but then to also be able to paint such a picture of it for others to see is rarer still.
This is in my top ten favorite books, and in the genre of memoirs it is in my top two (the other being Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World). I have never read someone as introspective as Eva Hoffman, nor as correct in self-analysis. She naturally understands psychology and the human condition as many doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists can only dream of. To say she is insightful is an understatement.
She is at an age where she is transforming from a child to a woman, and the event of relocating means she is transforming also from one cultural framework to another, one understanding of the world to another.
It is a difficult transformation, and it is a difficult book to read. Hoffman writes with precise detail, but in fragments, and I think this is how she experienced things at the time, or maybe how she experiences them looking back, as memories; regardless, this style prompts the reader to think as she thinks, feel as she feels. The book is frustrating sometimes; our protagonist is frustrated. The book is fluid and fulfilling at times; our protagonist is fluid and fulfilling. The book is tedious, then suspenseful, then sad, then blissful, then still and reflective, and always insightful.
Another element of style Eva Hoffman uses to draw the reader in: Present tense. The book is written in present tense. At first, this is unexpected. It takes time to adjust to, but once you do, you realize why it had to be in present tense. Writing the memoir, she is not merely remembering, she is re-living. And she wants us to live it with her. It was lonely the first time around. That it’s written in present tense evokes greater empathy, pricks the reader directly.
Hoffman explores reality and fantasy throughout the book. What is truth? What is real vs. what do we create that we believe is real? She also explores identity, memory, and how it feels to be caught between two worlds, like an anti-belonging.
Here are some of my favorite quotes and passages on these topics (fantasy & reality, identity, memory, anti-belonging):
Fantasy and reality:
On page 6 and 7, right from the beginning, Hoffman writes about the family fairy tales that mold us. Eva’s mother remembers her sister (Eva’s aunt) and the tragic way she died. Eva cannot separate truth from fairy tale, but she resolves to find out what really happened, even though this is impossible. It reminds me of Maxine Kingston’s memoir because her family tells her fantastic stories of their past, and she grows up on them as if they were truths.
Identity:
Memory:
Anti-belonging, feeling caught between two worlds:
And I leave you with something fun (Hoffman can be very witty and full of comedy):
“Sometimes I long to forget… It is painful to be conscious of two worlds” (Hoffman, P. 163).
To anyone who knows what it is to have transformed from one thing to another—the discomfort, that feeling of never being able to settle within one’s self in real, complete comfort, the unnerving feeling of being watchful within. Of being an observer, but not just an observer of the outside world and of others, but an observer of your own internal world, of the things that are supposed to just happen naturally, occur without thought, as commonplace, but to instead be painfully aware, thus never having full self-assurance, never having full comfort, never gaining that sense of self. So unlike Erikson’s toddler, who learns safety of environment and then is able to explore the outside world with confidence and delight, making it all as familiar as that first environment.
In other words: “I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness” (Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground).
On the surface, this is a book about a girl who emigrates from Poland to Canada. She learns a new language and a new way of life. Such a plot has been done many, many times, yes? Yes, but never like this.
The reason this book is so brilliant is because Eva Hoffman conveys meticulously well-thought truths about life. To have that kind of insight—to know—is rare enough, but then to also be able to paint such a picture of it for others to see is rarer still.
This is in my top ten favorite books, and in the genre of memoirs it is in my top two (the other being Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World). I have never read someone as introspective as Eva Hoffman, nor as correct in self-analysis. She naturally understands psychology and the human condition as many doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists can only dream of. To say she is insightful is an understatement.
She is at an age where she is transforming from a child to a woman, and the event of relocating means she is transforming also from one cultural framework to another, one understanding of the world to another.
It is a difficult transformation, and it is a difficult book to read. Hoffman writes with precise detail, but in fragments, and I think this is how she experienced things at the time, or maybe how she experiences them looking back, as memories; regardless, this style prompts the reader to think as she thinks, feel as she feels. The book is frustrating sometimes; our protagonist is frustrated. The book is fluid and fulfilling at times; our protagonist is fluid and fulfilling. The book is tedious, then suspenseful, then sad, then blissful, then still and reflective, and always insightful.
Another element of style Eva Hoffman uses to draw the reader in: Present tense. The book is written in present tense. At first, this is unexpected. It takes time to adjust to, but once you do, you realize why it had to be in present tense. Writing the memoir, she is not merely remembering, she is re-living. And she wants us to live it with her. It was lonely the first time around. That it’s written in present tense evokes greater empathy, pricks the reader directly.
Hoffman explores reality and fantasy throughout the book. What is truth? What is real vs. what do we create that we believe is real? She also explores identity, memory, and how it feels to be caught between two worlds, like an anti-belonging.
Here are some of my favorite quotes and passages on these topics (fantasy & reality, identity, memory, anti-belonging):
Fantasy and reality:
On page 6 and 7, right from the beginning, Hoffman writes about the family fairy tales that mold us. Eva’s mother remembers her sister (Eva’s aunt) and the tragic way she died. Eva cannot separate truth from fairy tale, but she resolves to find out what really happened, even though this is impossible. It reminds me of Maxine Kingston’s memoir because her family tells her fantastic stories of their past, and she grows up on them as if they were truths.
“Like so many children who read a lot, I begin to declare rather early that I want to be a writer. But this is the only way I have of articulating a different desire, a desire that I can’t yet understand. What I really want is to be transported into a space in which everything is as distinct, complete, and intelligible as in the stories I read. And, like most children, I’m a literalist through and through. I want reality to imitate books—and books to capture the essence of reality. I love words insofar as they correspond to the world, insofar as they give it to me in a heightened form. The more words I have the more distinct, precise my perceptions become—and such lucidity is a form of joy. Sometimes, when I find a new expression, I roll it on the tongue, as if shaping it in my mouth gave birth to a new shape in the world. Nothing fully exists until it is articulated. “She grimaced ironically,” someone says, and an ironic grimace is now delineated in my mind with a sharpness it never had before. I’ve now grasped a new piece of experience; it is mine” (P. 28).
“When my turn on the program comes, I am not nervous at all—because all this is happening out of time, out of space. I am, for a moment, a figure of my own fantasy, and I play my appointed role as if I were in the movies” (P. 91).
“…I hate having to pretend... Perhaps the extra knot that strangles my voice is rage. I’m enraged at the false persona I’m being stuffed into, as into some clumsy and overblown astronaut suit. I’m enraged at my adolescent friends because they can’t see through the guise…” (P. 119).
“I’m excited by my own otherness…” (P. 179).
Identity:
“…my fellow student informs me. 'This is a society in which you are who you think you are. Nobody gives you your identity here, you have to reinvent yourself everyday.' He is right, I suspect, but I can’t figure out how this is done. You just say who you are and everyone believes you? That seems like a confidence trick to me, and not one I think I can pull off. Still, somehow, invent myself I must. But how do I choose from identity options available all around me? I feel, once again, as I did when facing those ten brands of toothpaste—faint from excess, paralyzed by choice” (P. 160).
“‘Identity,’ for my Polish friends, is not a category of daily thought, not an entity etched in their minds in high relief. My American friends watch the vicissitudes of their identity carefully…They see themselves as pilgrims of internal progress, heroes and heroines in a psychic drama. If they’re unhappy, they tend to blame it on themselves, on how they haven’t fine-tuned their identity well enough, haven’t exorcised anger or acknowledged it sufficiently, have exerted too little, or too much control…. For my Polish friends, an identity, or a character, is something one simply has. If they take to drink, or become unhappy, or get depressed, they look for reasons in their circumstances; it’s because a lover left them, or censorship stopped their book, or the situation in Poland is hopeless, or life is hard” (P. 263).
Memory:
“Loss is a magical preservative. Time stops at the point of severance, and no subsequent impressions muddy the picture you have in mind. The house, the garden, the country you have lost remain forever as you remember them. Nostalgia—that most lyrical of feelings—crystallizes around these images like amber. Arrested within it, the house, the past, is clear, vivid, made more beautiful by the medium in which it is held and by its stillness” (P. 115).
Anti-belonging, feeling caught between two worlds:
“The very places where language is at its most conventional, where it should be most taken for granted, are the places where I feel the prick of artifice” (P. 106).
“Theodor Adorno, the most vitriolic of America’s foreign critics, once warned his fellow refugees that if they lost their alienation, they’d lose their souls” (P. 209).
“It is that little lock—the visible symbol of the privacy in which the diary is meant to exist—that creates my dilemma. If I am indeed to write something entirely for myself, in what language do I write?... Writing in Polish at this point would be a little like resorting to Latin or ancient Greek—an eccentric thing to do in a diary, in which you supposed to set down your most immediate experiences and unpremeditated thoughts in the most unmediated language. Polish is becoming a dead language, the language of the untranslatable past. But writing for nobody’s eyes in English? That’s like doing a school exercise, or performing in front of yourself, a slightly perverse act of self-voyeurism” (P. 120).
“Polish, in a short time, has atrophied, shriveled from sheer uselessness. Its words don’t apply to my new experiences…” (P. 107).
“I have to translate myself” (P. 211).
“I’ve become caught between stories, between the kinds of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves” (P. 268).
And I leave you with something fun (Hoffman can be very witty and full of comedy):
“We look at ads on TV carefully, hoping to gather clues as to whether Colgate or Crest is better. We receive the message that more dentists recommend Colgate with full seriousness, and from then on are loyally committed to this brand” (P. 135).
February 6, 2025
I’m fascinated by the way language shapes culture and vice versa, so I found Eva Hoffman’s exploration of how emigrating and learning a new language shaped her identity incredibly enlightening. While the third act is more challenging to read than the first two, it is also the most rewarding. Hoffman delves deep into the contrasts between one’s native language and adopted ways of communicating, reflecting on the rhythm of dialogue in close relationships and the struggle to connect not just because of linguistic barriers, but when underlying concepts are thought about in fundamentally different ways across cultures. Her insights feel especially relevant in the Information Age, where communication is both more abundant and more fragmented than ever.
March 26, 2020
3.5 stars. There are bits of this book that feel very familiar from other stories / memoirs by immigrant writers, but of course there are also pieces that are entirely singular to Hoffman's own experience. The focus on language and the (in)ability to translate one's feelings into a different language were perhaps the most interesting.
My favourite chapters were the ones on Hoffman's college years and academic experience. What I was most horrified about was the culture shock with regard to gender - how the Canadian women of late 50s/early 60s enforced a particular image of femininity, to the extent of snatching teenage Hoffman during a meeting to shave her armpits or to pluck her brows. What the hell.
My favourite chapters were the ones on Hoffman's college years and academic experience. What I was most horrified about was the culture shock with regard to gender - how the Canadian women of late 50s/early 60s enforced a particular image of femininity, to the extent of snatching teenage Hoffman during a meeting to shave her armpits or to pluck her brows. What the hell.
February 12, 2025
Read for a class and did enjoy discussing it. It’s artfully constructed but often to the point where Hoffman seems too distant; the third part mostly abandons what was charming/insightfully written in the first two sections and shifts the tone to one I often found irritatingly pretentious. Dare I say…Rory Gilmore type arc? (so sorry I’m about to finish Gilmore Girls and then it will stop being my universal reference)
March 30, 2024
This was amazing
June 20, 2023
"Durante largo tiempo, enfrentada a los peligros de la fragmentación del yo y de la desposesión, cultivo una rigurosa renuncia. Supongo que me resulta útil. Como un svãmī de la India que estuviera de visita, aprendo a no compararme con nadie y a sentirme en casa en todas partes. Mi dignidad exige no tener envidia, y protejo esa dignidad con mi propia vida. En cierto sentido, es mi vida; mi único punto de apoyo". ▪️Eva Hoffman nace y crece en Cracovia hasta la llegada de la adolescencia, cuando sus padres deciden mudarse a Canadá, "Al nuevo mundo" a empezar una nueva vida. Hijos de la guerra, muchos inmigrantes judíos de aquella época abandonaron sus lugares natales de la mano de sus familias, las que habían vivido la pobreza del comunismo o la amenaza del nazismo. Esperanzados por la idea de un Occidente que les devolviera la felicidad arrebatada pero siempre unidos, en cierta manera, a su lugar natal. La narración de Hoffman es autobiográfica y nostálgica, una niña que se acostumbra a vivir en dos culturas: la nueva y desconocida América y la añorada Polonia, un punto de un mapa cada vez más lejano que algún día ella consideró su hogar. Aprende a comunicarse en otra lengua y junto a ella trata de crear una identidad firme que no borre su cultura polaca pero tampoco rechace todo de la nueva cultura en la que ahora vive. Al principio los choques son fuertes, le cuesta adaptarse, no se encuentra del todo cómoda con las nuevas definiciones. Poco a poco olvida parte de su lengua nativa y la recupera en sueños o en segunda persona. Es un relato muy interesante que nace de una historia particular pero se extiende a lo universal: a cómo los humanos configuramos nuestra identidad en lucha constante entre nuestro yo individual y nuestro ser social. Una muestra de como la cultura nos impregna mucho más de lo que creemos, nos define y nos moldea. Al tratarse además de la experiencia de un inmigrante que no escoge irse es mucho más interesante ver cómo intenta el yo sostenerse en un lugar que siente como no correspondido. Me ha recordado en cierta manera a "Memoria de la melancolía" de María Teresa León, creo que ambas autoras comparten al principio la experiencia del exilio y la inmigración como una forma de alienación. Me ha gustado muchísimo. Sobretodo porque la mirada de Eva Hoffman es casi la de un científico naturalista que trata de averiguar cómo relacionarse entre esos nuevos "especímenes" que le rodean. Como si se tratara de un experimento antropológico vivido en las propias carnes, la autora observa y narra desde un profundo análisis la experiencia de adquirir una nueva cultura. Os lo recomiendo mucho. 🌹
March 31, 2013
The back of the book describes it as ‘graceful and profound’ and I will say simply that that is far too succinct a summation to be absolutely accurate. While the book does have a lot of interesting things to say about society and language and the complexities of moving between them it lacks a strong thread to bind the whole together. The narrative is a mind-bogglingly featureless one that fails to ever really grasp the reader’s attention. I found my mind wandering every few paragraphs and it was a force of will to actually affix my attention to it long enough to finish. No doubt my failure to find the core of the novel was at least in part due to my inability to read it for more than a few minutes at a time.
Putting aside the book’s merits as a whole, it did still manage to inspire new ideas though these appeared in very small increments primarily in accordance with the maximum attention span of the reader. The author moves from Poland as a young child and has only a tiny introduction to the English language. All of her internal dialog is in Polish and it is interesting to see how this colors the new world she’s living in. It emphasizes strongly the impact that the language in which we’re immersed has on our way of thinking and our way of interacting with others. As time goes on and she acquires more of a North American attitude her words too change both internal and external until her Polish language roots are no longer sufficient to sum up the whole that she has become as a person.
The other small hook in this novel lies in the cultural contrasts. She sums up well the “lostness” of American identify in which everyone seems to be pushing for more and more and more yet still feels they never have enough. While her more European background seems to be more placid, more content with the world as it is without having to constantly put such herculean effort into competing with everyone around you. These two combating viewpoints are a source of constant debate among her Polish friends until she too finally accedes to the American need to push.
So in summation, the book is a lot to digest and defied my expectations upon beginning it. It is a work to be studied and pondered upon rather than enjoyed. There is some small possibility of both, but the reader will be hard pressed to find an appropriate stopping point along the prosy primrose path to ponder the author’s intent since the book boasts three long chapters of 100 pages each and no real breaks anywhere in between where one can take a breath and internalize what has been presented.
Putting aside the book’s merits as a whole, it did still manage to inspire new ideas though these appeared in very small increments primarily in accordance with the maximum attention span of the reader. The author moves from Poland as a young child and has only a tiny introduction to the English language. All of her internal dialog is in Polish and it is interesting to see how this colors the new world she’s living in. It emphasizes strongly the impact that the language in which we’re immersed has on our way of thinking and our way of interacting with others. As time goes on and she acquires more of a North American attitude her words too change both internal and external until her Polish language roots are no longer sufficient to sum up the whole that she has become as a person.
The other small hook in this novel lies in the cultural contrasts. She sums up well the “lostness” of American identify in which everyone seems to be pushing for more and more and more yet still feels they never have enough. While her more European background seems to be more placid, more content with the world as it is without having to constantly put such herculean effort into competing with everyone around you. These two combating viewpoints are a source of constant debate among her Polish friends until she too finally accedes to the American need to push.
So in summation, the book is a lot to digest and defied my expectations upon beginning it. It is a work to be studied and pondered upon rather than enjoyed. There is some small possibility of both, but the reader will be hard pressed to find an appropriate stopping point along the prosy primrose path to ponder the author’s intent since the book boasts three long chapters of 100 pages each and no real breaks anywhere in between where one can take a breath and internalize what has been presented.
June 26, 2022
What an unpleasant book. Author came across as deeply self-absorbed and prone to idealizing everything Polish and denigrating everything North American. I get it -- she had a nice life as a child in Poland and didn't want to leave. But she is profoundly rude and ungrateful throughout, especially to the people in Vancouver who were trying to help her when she first arrived. Given that she wrote this decades later, you'd think she would have achieved some adult distance and seen that people were doing their best to be kind to her and that her ingratitude also likely played some part in the difficulty she had assimilating into Canadian, and then U.S., society. (I say this as a daughter of immigrants -- I know how hard it is to find your way in a new society!) But apparently nothing is her responsibility. *shrug*
April 19, 2008
Up until the last 20 pages this book was excellent. However, those last 20 pages were barely readable mush, an unfortunate end to an otherwise great examination of the importance of language in a person's life. This is not a memoir of what it means to learn a second language, but of what it means to live in a second language. The difference is crucial since the moment we learn our first language is the moment it becomes impossible to disentangle life from language. To move into a new language is thus an unnerving experience: the continuity of your life is broken as you use different languages to understand your past, present, and future. Eva well describes the sense of alienation that this engenders and the difficulty to recover your self in a new language.
September 30, 2012
Lyrical and intelligent. I thought this book was deeply profound and appreciated Hoffman's account of learning a new language as such an integral part of realizing her own identity (during her teen years and beyond, no less). With the acquisition of new language comes multicultural awareness — and awareness of our humanity and our individual place in a given culture, or cultures, and the world.
The small details here were as enlightening as the bigger epiphanies. One such example of the tenuous nature of conversation is her triumph at responding appropriately to an American anecdote ("That sounds like a trip ...").
The small details here were as enlightening as the bigger epiphanies. One such example of the tenuous nature of conversation is her triumph at responding appropriately to an American anecdote ("That sounds like a trip ...").
January 3, 2017
Waw, een boek voor al wie zich afvraagt hoe het is om je land te moeten verlaten om ergens anders te gaan wonen, weg van je oorspronkelijke taal, cultuur en omgeving.
Ik kocht dit boek in het museum van Oskar Schindler in Krakau en vond het fijn om over de stad te lezen die me toen zo heeft verrast. Maar dit boek was zoveel meer dan dat. Wondermooie zinnen, haarfijne observaties, misschien net iets te veel uitweiding over taal en de betekenis ervan naar mijn goesting.
Geen hap-slik-wegboek, ik moest me wel een beetje door de eerste zestig pagina's worstelen, maar daarna bleef het boeien. Blij dat ik het heb uitgelezen.
Ik kocht dit boek in het museum van Oskar Schindler in Krakau en vond het fijn om over de stad te lezen die me toen zo heeft verrast. Maar dit boek was zoveel meer dan dat. Wondermooie zinnen, haarfijne observaties, misschien net iets te veel uitweiding over taal en de betekenis ervan naar mijn goesting.
Geen hap-slik-wegboek, ik moest me wel een beetje door de eerste zestig pagina's worstelen, maar daarna bleef het boeien. Blij dat ik het heb uitgelezen.
January 13, 2019
Not really what I expected, but then memoirs are often unsatisfactory to me. I wanted to know more about linguistic experience which shapes the person. Also did not get on to well with the non-existent timeline.
December 9, 2023
As a person who has moved back and forth among England, Austria, Scotland and Germany, I found it interesting to listen to how difficult she found it to internalise and adjust from her childhood in Poland to North America.
I also think her English writing skills are excellent.
Her book is thought-provoking and I could personally identify with many of her issues. I also felt this her book enables others to understand some of the difficulties that anyone might face when adapting to another culture.
I also enjoyed her outsider view of Canadians and American life in the 1960s, where many immigrants felt they had "made it" if they had a nice house, car etc, but where Eva Hoffmann felt that these women led emptier, less confident, less fulfilled lives than if they had stayed on in Poland. This being partly due to so many immigrant women subjugating their authentic selves in order to comply with North American 1960s norms.
Eva Hoffmann and her younger sister were clearly highly talented and gifted and followed their career dreams successfully, but I felt she conveyed rather than stated that her parents had by emigrating sacrificed their lives for their two daughters. She doesn't explain whether she or her sister ever supported her parents financially, but I hope they did.
Eva herself had the courage to break out of a marriage because she felt unhappy and she had the confidence and talent to live a successful life as a single woman.
I also think her English writing skills are excellent.
Her book is thought-provoking and I could personally identify with many of her issues. I also felt this her book enables others to understand some of the difficulties that anyone might face when adapting to another culture.
I also enjoyed her outsider view of Canadians and American life in the 1960s, where many immigrants felt they had "made it" if they had a nice house, car etc, but where Eva Hoffmann felt that these women led emptier, less confident, less fulfilled lives than if they had stayed on in Poland. This being partly due to so many immigrant women subjugating their authentic selves in order to comply with North American 1960s norms.
Eva Hoffmann and her younger sister were clearly highly talented and gifted and followed their career dreams successfully, but I felt she conveyed rather than stated that her parents had by emigrating sacrificed their lives for their two daughters. She doesn't explain whether she or her sister ever supported her parents financially, but I hope they did.
Eva herself had the courage to break out of a marriage because she felt unhappy and she had the confidence and talent to live a successful life as a single woman.
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