Kozameh, Alicia 1953-

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Kozameh, Alicia 1953-

PERSONAL:

Born March, 1953, in Rosario, Argentina; immigrated to the United States, July, 1979; children: one daughter. Education: Studied at Universidad Nacional de Rosario and at Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, 1984-88.

ADDRESSES:

Home—CA. E-mail—aliciakoz@aol.com.

CAREER:

Fiction writer, poet, and educator. Monóculo Literary Workshops, Los Angeles, CA, founder, c. 1988; Santa Monica College's Emeritus College, Santa Monica, CA, English literature and creative writing instructor. Chapman University, Orange, CA, taught creative writing courses for graduate students in English and Spanish.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Crisis Best Short Story Award; Memoria Historica de las Mujeres en América Latina y el Caribe Literary Award, 2000.

WRITINGS:

Pasos Bajo el Agua, Editorial Contrapunto (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1987, translation by David E. Davis published as Steps under Water, foreword by Saúl Sosnowski, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1996.

(With others) Redes De La Memoria: Escritoras Exdetenidas: Testimonio y Ficción, Ediciones Instituto Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 2000.

259 Saltos, Uno Inmortal, Editorial Narvaja (Unquillo, Córdoba, Argentina), 2001, translation by Clare E. Sullivan published as Two Hundred Fifty-nine Leaps, the Last Immortal, introduction by Gwendolyn Diaz, Wings Press (San Antonio, TX), 2006.

Patas de Avestruz (title means "Ostrich Legs"), Alción Editora (Córdoba, Argentina), 2003.

Ofrenda De Propia Piel, Alción Editora (Córdoba, Argentina), 2004.

(Editor and author of introduction) Caleidoscopio: La mujer en la mira, Ediciones Instituto Movilizador de Fondas Cooperativas (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 2005.

Caleidoscopio 2: Inmigrantes en la mira, Ediciones Instituto Movilizador de Fondas Cooperativas (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 2006.

(With others) Nosotras, Presas Políticas, 1974-1983, Nuestra America (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 2006.

Basse danse, Alción Editora (Córdoba, Argentina), 2007.

Fragmento de Cantata, Ediciones Centro Cultural Ross (Rosario, Argentina), 2007.

Contributor to anthologies, magazines, newspapers, and periodicals, including the Southwest Review. Several of her books have been translated into German.

SIDELIGHTS:

Alicia Kozameh is a fiction writer, poet, and educator. Born in Rosario, Argentina, in March, 1953, she studied at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario. However, shortly before she graduated, she was arrested and held as a political prisoner before and during the military dictatorship from September, 1975, to December, 1978. Kozameh was imprisoned in the infamous basement of Rosario's police headquarters for the first year. She was subsequently transferred to Buenos Aires's Villa Devoto Prison. After her release, she remained on parole until July, 1979, when she fled the country, immigrating to Los Angeles, California, and then Mexico City, Mexico. In Mexico, she worked as an editor for a literary journal and as a journalist; she also published some of her works in various publications before returning to California.

Kozameh returned to Argentina in 1984 after democracy was restored to the country and continued her studies in philosophy and literature at the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires. It was here that she published her first book, Pasos Bajo el Agua. However, she was once again threatened by the political apparatus and returned to Los Angeles, this time with her daughter. In California again, Kozameh founded the Monóculo Literary Workshops, a creative writing workshop, in the late 1980s. In 2000, she began working as an English literature and creative writing instructor at Santa Monica College's Emeritus College. Kozameh's writing has won several awards, including the Crisis Best Short Story Award and the Memoria Historica de las Mujeres en América Latina y el Caribe Literary Award in 2000. Her writing has been featured in the Southwest Review, as well as in other publications and anthologies.

Kozameh published Pasos Bajo el Agua in 1987. It was translated into English in 1996 by David E. Davis and published, with a foreword by Saúl Sosnowski, as Steps under Water by the University of California Press. The book covers the thirty-nine-month period when the author was in jail, using a character named Sara as the protagonist. In the months before Isabel Peron was toppled, Sara became a political prisoner, remaining under two years of surveillance after being released. Sara, an activist, is imprisoned and her lover, Hugo, disappears. Sara details her life in jail and the physical, mental, and emotional brutality she faced regularly. Matters are further complicated when Hugo suddenly reappears in jail after she had conditioned herself to live without him and had found romance with Marco, an already married man. Sara copes with her jail time horrors and the bonds she made with her jail mate sisters.

James Polk, writing in the New York Times Book Review, remarked that the translation's "lack of clear narrative structure" adds "to its overall strength, reinforcing the book's center: the equally fragmented, episodic experience of prison and its ambivalent aftermath." Booklist contributor Brian Kenney proposed that this story must have been "painful to write" for Kozameh with her parallel experiences as a prisoner of war and fleeing her homeland. However, Kenney suggested that the story "would have been improved by more context, more of Sara's life, especially before her arrest, would have lent the book greater historical depth." A contributor to Publishers Weekly commented that Kozameh writes best when she is "depicting the horrors of prison life." The same contributor concluded that "Kozameh has produced a book that succeeds both as fiction and as testimony."

Alicia Partnoy, writing in the Women's Review of Books, said that "although Steps under Water bears the words ‘a novel’ on its cover, it reads as a collection of tales. Fragmentation as narrative device is common in works by women writers who have suffered repression." Partnoy observed that "Kozameh's novel is an exercise in the translation of culture, with the goal of denouncing state terrorism and rebuilding the writer's identity threatened by the repressor." Partnoy reminisced that "the Spanish original of this book kept stronger links to the actual events. Authors usually bend to the wills of publishers in order to have their work in print, and testimonial writers, who seek to move their audiences to challenge human rights abuses, have all the more reason to yield to those demands." Ilan Stavans, reviewing the book in World Literature Today, said that Steps under Water "is both a haunting document and an accomplished narrative. The translation by David E. Davis is of high caliber, and the introduction by Saul Sosnowski places Kozameh's plot in the context of Argentine politics. Many, to be sure, have written about the Dirty War before … but very few have done so with Kozameh's pathos and gravity. We owe her for exposing us to the trauma of recollection."

In 2000, Kozameh published Redes De La Memoria: Escritoras Exdetenidas: Testimonio y Ficción through Ediciones Instituto Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos with other writers.

Kozameh published 259 Saltos, Uno Inmortal in 2001, which was later translated into English by Clare E. Sullivan and published by Wings Press in 2006 as Two Hundred Fifty-nine Leaps, the Last Immortal. Introduced by Gwendolyn Diaz, the book is a work of fiction but closely follows Kozameh's experiences as a political exile. The character of Sara, used again from her previous account, mimics Kozameh, being an Argentinean writer who was jailed for more than three years in her native Rosario for conducting government-deemed inappropriate political activism. In the early 1970s, Sara is released from the jails and immigrates to Los Angeles and Mexico to escape the restrictive government in Argentina and to avoid falling into a rut of isolationism like many formerly imprisoned Argentinean activists before her. It is at this point that the narrative begins, focusing on Sara's reflections on life in prison and in virtual political exile. After some time, Sara eventually returns to Argentina. The story itself is pieced together by 259 poetic fragments, including Sara's thoughts, feelings, memories, and experiences.

Faye A. Chadwell, writing in Library Journal, found the writing "complex," but noted that "these lyrical glimpses still effectively convey the emotional consequences of Sara's torture and solitary confinement."

Kozameh published Patas de Avestruz, which translates into English as "Ostrich Legs," in 2003. This was followed by Ofrenda De Propia Piel in 2004. In 2005 and 2006, Kozameh wrote and introduced two volumes called Caleidoscopio: La mujer en la mira and Caleidoscopio 2: Inmigrantes en la mira. She then published, with other former political prisoners, Nosotras, Presas Políticas, 1974-1983 in 2006. These works were followed in 2007 by Basse danse and Fragmento de Cantata.

Kozameh told CA: "I became interested in writing even before knowing how to read and write. I felt the need of expressing myself in a creative way when I was about three years old. I remember asking my mother to write the words I dictated to her.

"The authors I love the most are James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, William Faulkner, and Juan Rulfo, among others.

"I have never had a routine; I don't press myself into writing. The ideas mature and, from inside of my head, they knock on the internal walls of my skull to be liberated. Then, I write. While I'm writing I'm anxious and don't want to be interrupted. The correction and polishing process is what I enjoy the most.

"The most surprising thing I have learned as a writer is that I wouldn't be able to live without writing.

"I want my books to be appreciated for the quality of the writing. Some of them, also, are destined to let the reader know about terrible things we humans may go through during our lifetime, and how we are capable of surviving them and overcoming them."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 1996, Brian Kenney, review of Steps under Water, p. 570.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April 1, 1997, review of Steps under Water, p. 1344.

Library Journal, October 15, 1996, Lawrence Olszewski, review of Steps under Water, p. 90; July 1, 2007, Faye A. Chadwell, review of Two Hundred Fifty-nine Leaps, the Last Immortal, p. 79.

New York Times Book Review, January 12, 1997, James Polk, review of Steps under Water.

Publishers Weekly, October 7, 1996, review of Steps under Water, p. 67.

Times Literary Supplement, January 31, 1997, Stephen Henighan, review of Steps under Water, p. 19.

Women's Review of Books, November 1, 1997, Alicia Partnoy, review of Steps under Water, p. 26.

World Literature Today, spring, 1997, Ilan Stavans, review of Steps under Water, p. 361.