Content area
Full Text
For the Sake of the Homeland? Semel, Nava. Paper Bride. Trans. Sondra Silverston. Victoria, Australia: Hybrid Publishers, 2012. 288 pp., paper, $22.56. ISBN 1921665564.
Nava Semel, an Israeli writer who is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, treads a difficult path, rendering with complexity and ambiguity the myths, realities, and multiple truths that exist in Israel/Palestine. In her novel Paper Bride, Semel critiques Zionist characterizations of Palestinians and colonialists, and gender-role expectations for Israeli men and boys, girls and women. She also challenges the Zionist foundation of the Israeli state, although not the legitimacy of the Israeli state. Rather, she portrays Israel as a land that saved the lives of many Holocaust survivors and as a homeland that potentially could be shared peacefully by two different peoples: Arabs and Jews.
Her books have not been published in the U.S. SemePs critique of Zionism could be a factor. Some of the linguistic subtleties might be lost in translation. Confusion over her target audience also might be problematic. Many of her publications, including Paper Bride, can be categorized as young adult fiction, because they often are written from the vantage point of children. Yet in Paper Bride her themes are mature and complicated. This book could be adopted for a young adult literature course, but also is appropriate for any literature or history course, if adequately contextualized. On the other hand, And the Rat Laughed, another Semel novel, is not a young adult text. It features a child protagonist, but more directly addresses the brutality and traumatic effects of the Holocaust on women survivors and future generations.
In Paper Bride, Semel draws on the cultural values of British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s. The book's protagonist, twelve-year-old Uriel, known as Uzik, obsesses about the one movie he has seen in his life, Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). He sees Johnny Weissmuller, who played Tarzan, as a role model for his developing construction of masculinity and heroism. Weissmuller, who...