“Un libro no convencional”: Communities of Response and Finding Jewishness in Alex Appella’s Writing

Abstract

This article analyzes Alex Appella’s art book published in Argentina in English as The János Book and in Spanish as Entonces el libro and Después de la carta, along with the reception of the book among “communities of response” in classrooms throughout Argentina through a program called the Biblioteca Ambulantes, or Traveling Libraries. I argue that Appella’s writing is multidirectional and nonlinear, two significant characteristics of Jewish writing that necessitate greater attention to the flow of ideas and people across borders in the Western hemisphere, such as between the United States and Argentina, as well as across the Atlantic, such as in contact with Eastern Europe or Israel. Moreover, this multidirectionality draws in “communities of response” in Argentina, even students in a largely Catholic and/or indigenous society who may have previously known little or nothing about Jewish history or the Holocaust. Thinking with the concept of “communities of response” (Davis 1997), my article means to draw attention to the many possibilities for resonance or meaning, which go beyond simple and perhaps misguided assumptions that attempt to fix the Jewishness of Appella or her writing.