My father and I
Subtitle: the Marais and the queerness of community
By: David Caron.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 267
ISBN-13: 9780801447730
Subjects: Gottlieb, Joseph, -- 1919-2004; Caron, David -- Family; Gay community -- France -- Paris -- History; Jewish neighborhoods -- France -- Paris -- History; Homosexuality -- France -- Paris -- History; Jews -- France -- Paris -- History; Marais (Paris, France) -- History
Description: "Mixing personal memoir, urban studies, cultural history, and literary criticism, as well as a generous selection of photographs, My Father and I focuses on the Marais, the oldest surviving neighborhood of Paris. It also beautifully reveals the intricacies of the relationship between a Jewish father and a gay son, each claiming the same neighborhood as his own. Beginning with the history of the Marais and its significance in the construction of a French national identity, David Caron proposes a rethinking of community and looks at how Jews, Chinese immigrants, and gays have made the Marais theirs. These communities embody, in their engagement of urban space, a daily challenge to the French concept of universal citizenship that denies them all political legitimacy." "Caron moves from the strictly French context to more theoretical issues such as social and political archaism, immigration and diaspora, survival and haunting, the public/private divide, and group friendship as metaphor for unruly and dynamic forms of community, and founding disasters such as AIDS and the Holocaust. Caron also tells the story of his father, a Hungarian Jew and Holocaust survivor who immigrated to France and once called the Marais home."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue : my father and I; title: The old neighborhood; title: A queer ghetto; title: Things past; title: Disaster, failure, and alienation; title: The queerness of group friendship; title: Epilogue : my father and I.