Our June Book Club selection, Dana Shem-Ur’s Where I Am, is a novel that looks intensely at the dissonances of daily life in the aftermath of migrancy, profoundly reaching below the surface of superficial comfort to read the disassociations and discontents that stem from being not quite in-place. Reaching into the mind of an Israeli translator named Reut who has settled in France, Shem-Ur constructs a map of navigations amidst cultural codes, languages, and physical agitations, drawing out the anxiety of belonging. In this interview, we speak to Shem-Ur and translator Yardenne Greenspan about this novel’s simmering frustrations and the new Israeli diaspora, and how they have both used language to reflect the confounding boundaries of our social fabric.
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Laurel Taylor (LT): Dana, I’d like to ask you about what sparked the creation of this novel—particularly as you’re already a translator and scholar. How did Where I Am come about?
Dana Shem-Ur (DS): I come from a family of a female authors. My mom is a poet, and my grandma wrote over thirty books, so I always was involved in this world. In fact, when I was little, I didn’t even read a lot. I just wrote fiction, and even published a small novella of one hundred pages when I was about twelve.
Then I dropped it because I was engaged in studying history, and I channeled my life of writing into other domains. It was only later on, when I was in Paris for three years for my master’s degree in philosophy, that I just came home one summer and wrote the first few pages.
I think what generated this novel was my certainty that I would remain in France, and I would have a life there. I began writing this story about a woman who is twenty years older than me and lives in Paris, but she’s unhappy, and I think part of it was just a reflection of my fears. What will become of me? Will I become Reut?
LT: It’s almost like speculative autofiction?
DS: Yeah. I didn’t even notice it when I wrote it, but it was also inspired by a lot of characters that I met. No character in Where I Am is a real person, but the salon of people at the Jean-Claude household are all inspired by people I met and by these talks and these Parisian intellects, who I always found very fascinating; they are my friends, but throughout the period I lived there, I felt there was a barrier between us. I was always the observer who was looking at this spectacle, not completely present, like Reut. I’m very fascinated by foreign cultures, so it felt like something I needed to write about.
LT: Yardenne, how did you first encounter this novel? And what made you want to translate it?
Yardenne Greenspan (YG): Well, Dana got in touch about translating a sample, and we worked pretty closely together on almost a third of the book. We had a few back-and-forths, she sent me her notes and her questions, and we tried different solutions together. We got to know each other a little bit, and I felt like I had enough opportunities to ask questions and understand Reut’s character.
My life is very different from this character’s life, but I am an Israeli person living in a different country, surrounded by people who grew up with differences—both tiny cultural differences, and big ideas about how we live and how we interact with others. So I felt some kinship with her.
LT: That’s an unusual way for a book to enter the translation process. Dana, how did you find Yardenne?
DS: I didn’t really know any translators from Hebrew to English, and it’s very difficult to find a good one like Yardenne. I began searching, and I came across Jessica Cohen’s name, but she was busy, and luckily she recommended a few names to me; the first one, the only one I wrote to, was Yardenne.
And right away, there was this incredible connection which I also find cosmic. Because Yardenne also happened to be the translator of my mom’s recent book—which is her first book translated into English: Seven Cats I Have Loved. So the timing of Yardenne being the translator angel for both me and my mom was amazing, and having a good translator—as a translator mysellf—is the biggest gift you can find. It’s everything.
LT: At the beginning, you worked fairly closely together. Did that remain true as you completed the book?
YG: I would say it did. So the way I usually work is: I have a preliminary conversation with the author to make sure we’re in the same mindset and on the same page, and I ask some questions about the style and the story to ascertain what is most essential, in the author’s opinion, about this book. Since translation inherently involves changing certain things, I am also pausing constantly to check what my priority should be—should it be preserving a certain word choice, or a theme, or just getting the message across even if the words are different? And that will change throughout the book, but I like to get a general idea from the author about what their priorities are so I can keep that in my mind as I work.
After that, I work in a solitary fashion. It’s not collaborative; it’s just me delving in, going through the draft, getting it as polished as possible, and then I’ll send it back. At that point, I usually get comments, questions, editing suggestions, all sorts of things from the author—because mostly every Israeli person will have some knowledge of the English language. It’s pretty easy to communicate and figure out if anything slipped, if anything got mixed up, if anything was misunderstood, or even just to make sure that the author can still hear their own voice.
And of course the process looks different with every author that I work with. Some are very free-spirited and will let me change things as I wish, and others will ask me to make sure that certain things don’t get lost. I’ve even had authors who argued with me about commas versus periods, so there is a huge range with the level of involvement.
With Dana, I think it was mostly about preserving the tone. I think out of all the things that we worked on together, that was one of the most crucial ones: making sure the sentence structure and the word choice resonated in such a way that the Hebrew and the English felt equivalent.
DS: The musicality, yes. I must say that I might have been a little annoying, in retrospect. For me, this book was a true challenge to translate into English, because people who read it in Hebrew said it was kind of influenced by the French structure. It is a book about a translator, and writing it, I didn’t even notice how a different structure had penetrated into the Hebrew.
I also thought about it with my mom when she read it, because my mom is also an editor. “Don’t use this word,” she would tell me, but I would feel the need to use that particular word in Hebrew—so imagine when you need to translate it into English! And that’s partly the difficulty for Yardenne, and she handled it really well.
YG: That’s a major part of translation: to make sure that it’s still the original book, and that it even feels like an original from a different language without alienating readers, without making their lives too difficult.
LT: That’s interesting you should bring up the French influence, Dana, because actually, in some ways this does feel like a very Parisian novel. So I’m wondering for you, Yardenne, when you’re translating, are you also going to other similar texts or translations? To have that tone or that style in mind as you translate?
YG: If, in our preliminary conversation, the author mentions a text they were inspired by, then I will seek it out. I do usually ask an author, “Which books would you say your book resembles? What do you aspire for it to read like?” But I admit that I don’t usually go and read something different unless I’m really stuck; I prefer to let the book teach me. So typically in my first draft, the first few chapters will be kind of clunky. Then, as I translate, I figure more things out, and in later drafts, I can make sure it’s all even.
LT: One of the themes that really stood out to me throughout this book is the role that languages play, the ways that they can define boundaries—even in a nation where polyglotism is the norm rather than the exception. Dana, you speak eight languages, and Yardenne, you’re bilingual. Could you both speak a bit about the role of language within the novel—particularly for Reut, as a translator herself?
DS: When I wrote this book, I was just beginning to translate. So to make Reut a translator—I didn’t really think about it. It was just obvious. But it was a bit more about how, for Reut, being a translator symbolizes her renouncement of her profession and her Ph.D. She is just a translator, and everybody is very enthusiastic about that, but she isn’t.
As we mentioned, the whole novel is written in a somewhat French tone, so inside of the Hebrew, there is this dominant foreign element. Language itself is a barrier between Reut and her husband. Her name is Re-ut, which means “friendship” in Hebrew, but her husband cannot pronounce it. I chose this name deliberately with this in mind, creating a barrier even within her own name.
With her son, too, the limits of language are evident; she had tried to teach him Hebrew, but how could she really teach him when she herself is alienated from Israel? Thus, she finds herself in her mid-forties, living with a very French family. As a person who is fascinated by languages, I had thought, “What if I were to be married? And I had a child who speaks another language? How would I feel about it?” I really wanted to maintain the integrity of different languages in the novel, to show that certain things cannot be translated.
YG: It’s funny, because I started translating by accident, and then it just felt very natural and good, so I kept doing it. In retrospect, a big part of what drew me to translation is reconciling the two parts of me. I was born in Israel and lived in Israel until I was twenty-seven, but both my parents grew up in the US. Then, as my translation career was just starting, I moved to New York. So a lot of it was just the way language represents identity and the attempt to reconcile those identities.
I think for Reut, she doesn’t seem to get a lot of joy from the act of translating; it mostly inspires anxiety for her. I have to think that has to do with the disconnect she feels between herself and the life she lives, and how she’s trying to figure out her identity. I think it’s no accident that the book is called Where I Am and not Who I Am, because Reut just really doesn’t know. She ran away from one kind of existence to find herself in another one, but neither of them really feels like home.
LT: Another standout theme for me in the novel was Reut’s ongoing frustrations as a woman in a marriage with someone who would probably count himself as an enlightened individual. One of the tragedies that really struck me was how frustrated she is in her marriage and the ways that Jean-Claude belittles her, but I also imagine that she’ll almost certainly stay with him, and that she really loves him. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about this book’s portrayal of gender and its function in a marriage like this.
DS: I’m not sure that she really loves him. At the beginning of the novel, she is questioning where she is, and by the end of this novel, she is asking herself, “What am I doing here?” I really wanted to describe this sense of frustration, which might not be easy for a lot of readers to endure for a whole novel, but I think that Reut’s frustration and her path to understanding it is the narrative’s journey. It’s a situation that many women encounter nowadays. Many people who have supposedly happy lives feel even greater guilt when something is bothering them, but they won’t admit it. That is why there are many scenes of biological discomfort in the book; this physical drama reflects the tension and the sense of guilt she feels because she does not find any joy in her very privileged life.
I wanted Reut to discover this drive women have to be perfect all of the time. She needs to be the perfect hostess and the perfect mom, but she will never be a hostess like a Parisian woman will be, and she doesn’t even want to be. She’s battling herself all the time, constantly readjusting. I think this is a very frustrating situation that many women might relate to.
LT: Translation is often a feminized profession. Was that also in the back of your mind as you were writing?
DS: Being a translator is very a nomadic profession, so on that level, Reut is also detached from the world. She doesn’t even feel passion for it. And she’s angry about her Ph.D., because Jean-Claude just said, “I will go to Paris. You’re welcome to join me, and if not, bye.” So she dropped out of the program. In her eyes, being a professor and being in the Academy is a way of rising and establishing her own place. But instead, Jean-Claude is the professor, and she’s living from book to book.
LT: Yardenne, did you find yourself also kind of resonating with some of those troubles that Reut meets?
YG: Not really. I resonated with her general sense of anxiety and the question of how to behave in the world—that happens to me all the time: the feeling in the beginning of the book where you’ve overslept and you wake up, and everything is perfectly fine but you feel totally confused. And then in the later section, when you’re staying in someone’s home and you don’t know what’s appropriate—it’s very relatable.
Her marriage really frustrated me, honestly. As lost as she is, it was hard for me to accept that she had chosen to stay with someone like Jean-Claude. I think something must have happened to her in the life before the book, something we’re not being told, that made her feel she just doesn’t deserve any better than this. I don’t really agree that she deeply loves him. I think she just doesn’t really stop to consider if she does or she doesn’t. She’s just in it.
A lot of it comes from complacency, because she knows at least what to expect from this situation. My sense of Reut is that she would not be able to say that she loves him, even as a lie. I feel like she gets so stuck on the simplest things that the question would just feel too complicated.
DS: And that’s what I wanted to describe in the encounter with Bernard: that she never stops thinking about fitting herself around Jean-Claude until she goes on this journey for a whole day in Ostuni with a man who’s not even her type. Bernard is so in love with himself that Reut would never consider him as a romantic prospect; he’s too happy and optimistic for her. But she’s attracted to him because he really gives her attention. This situation was the climax I wanted to present: her realizing something is wrong. “In fact, I should ask myself, what am I doing with Jean-Claude? Finally, here is a man that listens to me, and I don’t even like him.”
LT: I wanted to ask you both about this book in a broader context. I couldn’t help but notice the blurb from Joshua Cohen who said: “Dana Shem-Ur is one of the rising stars in the new Israeli literature.” And David C. Kraemer similarly said, “It’s a crucial book for the now of Israeli identity.” It struck me that they are both members of the Jewish community in the US, and I was curious how both of you feel about this notion of the “new” or the “now” of Israeli identity—especially given that this book takes place in continental Europe.
DS: It was very interesting for me, because when I wrote the book, I thought I was really writing a book about an Israeli woman who was going through existential difficulties. I did not think I was writing a Jewish book that represents something more crucial to Judaism.
Then, when I went to America and had to discuss this book in synagogues and with the Jewish community after having put it aside for a bit, I thought it really does seems that this book is representative of a situation many Jews encounter nowadays. For several years now, many have chosen to leave Israel, and there is a new diaspora of Israelis in America. Once upon a time, the term diaspora only meant Jews from the war because there was no Israel, and now, in such a short amount of time, there is a country. However, Reut chose to leave that country, as many Israelis do, so I think that this book, as David Kramer said, is a crucial text for Jewish identity because it represents this new Israeli diaspora, and how they strive to fit into a new place as foreigners—but in a different way than the Jewish people who lived before World War II. Things have changed, but the question of assimilation versus identity remains.
YG: And we can’t really ignore the current moment in Israel. I’d say the new Israeli identity is still undecided; it’s people trying to figure out the meaning of the place they live, trying to figure out if it’s even viable to exist here. There’s so many contradictions at the heart of Israel, at the heart of its existence.
A lot of young to middle-aged Israeli professionals are choosing to leave. I think Jews used to move for security reasons, and then later for financial reasons, but at the moment it’s more like a question of, “We’re not sure there’s a future here. Let us try to build one someplace else.” So it does feel very timely to have a character like Reut; the choices feel more personal for her—less like part of an exodus and more like a choice to start over and be someone else.
But it’s certainly a question, because if I had to guess, I’d say probably one out of every ten or twenty people who consider leaving actually do, because being brought up in Israel, there is a strong sense of not just belonging to the place, but owing it a debt that is drilled into our brains. It’s very hard to step away from that. It’s very hard to just let go and think about it as a place without giving it a more personal significance.
Dana Shem-Ur lived in Paris for three years and obtained a master’s degree in philosophy from the École Normale Supérieure. She is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Tel Aviv University who translates from French, Italian, and Chinese into Hebrew.
Yardenne Greenspan is a writer and Hebrew translator born in Tel Aviv and based in New York. Her writing has been featured in Literary Hub, Haaretz, Words Without Borders, Asymptote, Two Lines, and Apogee, among other publications. Her translations have been published by Restless Books, St. Martin’s Press, Akashic, Syracuse University, New Vessel Press, Amazon Crossing, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Her translation of The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid was a 2020 New York Times Notable Book. She has an MFA from Columbia University and is a regular contributor to Ploughshares.
Laurel Taylor is a translator and Ph.D. candidate in Japanese and comparative literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Her writing and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Monkey, the Asia Literary Review, Mentor & Muse, and more.
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