THREE PREFATORY NOTES

Language encounters between Europeans and Native Americans were represented in writing almost exclusively by Europeans. Language encounters in Louisiana between White francophone slave-masters and Black creolophone slaves were represented in writing almost exclusively by Whites. But language encounters in America between immigrants and residents are different; they have been represented in writing mostly by the immigrants themselves.

There is something to regret in that; any encounter takes two, and understanding it means exploring both perspectives. But there is more to rejoice at. Too often we have to see language encounters through the languages of the more powerful: invaders, colonizers, and slave-masters. Here we can see them through the languages of the aspiring citizen, the refugee, the petitioning outsider, the “homeless, tempest-tossed,” the alien.

The linguistic experiences of Jewish American immigrants were chiefly represented in literature in two languages, Yiddish and English. The present account focuses almost exclusively on literature written in Yiddish. Why?

The first reason is practical. The territory is vast, and mapping both the English and Yiddish regions would be a vast undertaking. The English domain, moreover, has been fully and brilliantly explored. Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, for example, arguably the greatest Jewish American language novel and certainly the most ambitious and the greatest in English, has been the object of fine studies by Werner Sollors and Hana Wirth-Nesher.