Inventing Memory | Topics for Discussion & Projects

Inventing Memory Key Questions

The familial elements in Inventing Memory are universal in their appeal, since every woman is also a daughter, even though she may choose not to be a mother herself. An interesting comparison could be developed by discussing Inventing Memory in conjunction with another saga of mothers and daughters, Joan Chase's During the Reign of theQueen of Persia (1996). The questions in Jong's novel that address Jewish identity could be profitably examined in comparison to Bernard Malamud's The Fixer (1966; see separate entry), Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night (1982), or Etty Hillesum's diary An Interrupted Life (1996). Additionally, a less well-known novel, Rebecca Goldstein's The Mind-Body Problem (1993) features a family of Orthodox Jews as viewed through the eyes of a wayward scholarly daughter not unlike Sara. Be sure to give some thought also to the implications of the title: do we all merely invent the past for ourselves to suit...
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