Talk: "Solidarity as a Tool for Survival" by Alicia Partnoy

Partnoy's lecture will discuss how solidarity has nurtured her in the journey from victim to witness. Through the writings and artwork of other survivors and her own, including the recent publication in Israel of the Hebrew edition of The Little School. Tales of Disappearance and Survival, she will illustrate how her experience in Argentina has been transformed into literature, cultural theory and testimony to achieve justice.

Poet, memoirist, scholar, and human rights activist Alicia Partnoy is the author, translator or editor of twelve books and the chapbook Ecos lógicos y otros poemares, published in El Salvador. Her work has been published in Spanish, English, Hebrew, Turkish, Bengali, and French. Partnoy is best known for The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival, which is evidence in the trials against the genocide perpetrators that terrorized Argentina in the 70’s. In that book she tells about her own disappearance. Partnoy spent three years as a political prisoner, with no charges and arrived as a refugee to the U.S in December 1979. She was Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International U.S.A, co-chair of the Survivors Committee, and member of the Board of Directors of PEN West. Her most recent book, co-written with Dr. Martina Ramirez, is the testimony of her transgender friend: Happier as a Woman. Transforming Friendships, Transforming Lives. Professor Emerita at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Partnoy presides over Proyecto VOS-Voices of Survivors, which she founded with her husband Antonio Leiva.

This lecture is a part of the Gale Collaborative on Jewish Life in the Americas Lecture Series. 

Sponsored by:Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies; Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Latin American Initiative at the School of Law