The interpreter and ethnic texts: Jewish‐American literary experience

Abstract

Many members of American ethnic minorities currently question whether an interpreter (who by birth, lived experience, and cultural association is an “outsider” to a given ethnic domain) can ever understand the fullness of an ethnic text. Using Jewish‐American prose fiction as an example, the article suggests that an important distinction should be made between “Jewish experience” and TEXTUAL (Jewish) EXPERIENCE. While access to the former may be impossible, access to the latter need not be.