No Return Address - A Memoir of Displacement

No Return Address is a vivid memoir of a life in exile and a poignant meditation on pleasure and loss, repression and transgression, and the complexities of love under harsh human conditions. In recounting her life's journey from Romania to Paris and Brussels, then on to the United States, Anca Vlasopolos writes movingly of the peculiar attributes of displacement in the contemporary world -- the hyphenated, ambiguous identities; the purgatory in which immigrants await transfer to another country; the mysterious nostalgia for places and events dimly recalled. Throughout, she describes the constant search for a place to truly call home.
Vlasopolos renders a clear and loving portrait of her mother, an Auschwitz survivor courageously raising a young girl by herself after the death of her husband, a political dissident. She details their years of limbo in Brussels and Paris and of settlement in Detroit, Michigan, as well as her ultimate decision to identify the United States as home, inspired by the strong multicultural quality that allows so many others to do the same.

List of contents

Foreword
Chronology
1. Mouthfuls
2. Gatekeepers
3. Out of the Mouth
4. The Vocabulary of Faith
5. Mud Miracles
6. To Eat or Not to Eat
7. Bucharest
8. Contingencies
9. Telling Tales
10. Growing Boys
11. Paris
12. Brussels
13. Walls
14. Frankfurt Passage
15. Misplacing Detroit
16. Where All the Lights Were Bright
17. Variations on the Pastoral
18. Sub-Urban Skies
19. Endings, Continuities
20. Returns

About the author

Anca Vlasopolos

Summary

A memoir of a life in exile. Anca Vlasopolos recounts her life's journey from Romania to Paris and Brussels, then on to the United States. She writes about the peculiar attributes of displacement in the comtemporary world; the ambiguous identities, and the nostalgia for places dimly recalled.

Product details

• Authors: Anca Vlasopolos, Vlasopolos Anca
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 07.11.2000
• EAN: 9780231121309
• ISBN: 978-0-231-12130-9
• No. of pages: 240
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Biographies, autobiographies; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, Biography: general, Autobiography: general, HISTORY / Europe / General, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, American English, United States of America, USA, Migration, immigration and emigration, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Relating to migrant groups / diaspora communities or peoples