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The Forgetting River A Modern Tale of Survival Identity and the Inquisition Doreen Carvajal Books

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The Forgetting River A Modern Tale of Survival Identity and the Inquisition Doreen Carvajal Books

Descended from Spanish colonials, Doreen Carvajal is convinced that her ancestors may have been conversos-- Spanish Jews forced into hiding during the Inquisition. To research her past she takes up residence in a small Andalusian town. Carvajal finds that even hundreds of hears later the issue of conversos is met with silence. Signs of Jewish communities have been hidden, and many are unwilling to talk about Spain's troubled past. Research has shown that Spain has unusually high levels of anti-Semitism. It has also shown that a significant portion of the population has converso ancestors. Spain's relationship with its Inquisition and its larger history of religious persecution is certainly an interesting one.

Carvajal writes beautifully about her Spanish town, its residents, and its customs. She is a strong believer in fate, in things happening for larger cosmic reasons, and genetic memory. Carvajal believes that the sense of belonging she feels in Andalusia is the result of awakening genetic impulses, long buried by the Carvajal family's colonial settlement in the Americas. She discovers all sorts of potential hidden messages in art and architecture, secret acts of resistance on the part of conversos. Some of these conclusions are more tenuous than others. I must admit that I have less of a belief in fate and genetic memory than the author, so I think I was a bit more skeptical of some assumptions. Still, the book is a pleasure to read. The subject matter is engaging, and the descriptions are beautiful.

I realize that this was not written as an academic text, but there were significant points at which I wanted more scholarly apparatus. I wanted to know what existing research and literature have to say. I wanted footnotes that I could dig into. There were things discussed generally that I wished were cited, so I could find out their origin. I suspect Carvajal was required to leave the scholarly heavy lifting out of the book by her publisher. I believe that was a mistake. That framework would have added tremendously to this book.


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The Forgetting River A Modern Tale of Survival Identity and the Inquisition Doreen Carvajal Books Reviews

In 1492, Jews of Spain were give a choice leave, die, or convert. Many died at the stake or under torture. My ancestors fled to the Netherlands, then England and remained overt Jews from Spain, Sephardim. Some who stayed in Spain converted under duress. A few of these converted Jews took enormous risks to remember their heritage the Anusim, the forced ones.

My friend, Diane, whose family has been Catholic for generations, like Carvajals, told me about "The Forgetting River." In her family, too, there have been hints and clues of a hidden heritage, of the often life-or-death struggle to both conceal and keep a Jewish identity.

Thus, I began reading "The Forgetting River" for my friend's sake, yet within the first few pages, kept reading for the book's own qualities. The center around which the stories turn is the Spanish town of Arcos de la Frontera, one of the white villages on the steep hill slopes. It lies above the Guadalete, named from one of the four rivers in Hades---Lethe, the river from which souls returning to the upper world drink, to forget their past lives.

The author and her family have moved from France because her possible Anusim ancestors may have left from the nearby port of Cadiz in the time of the Spanish conquest of central and south America. By living and studying in Arcos (among other places whose archives she searched), she wanted to understand their past and present lives.

Her story shuttles across 500 years the family betrayed to the Inquisition and burned at the stake in Mexico, the courageous grandmother whose dying rejection of rituals may have continued a long-hidden other life, her Aunt Luz, the candle of memory across generations, the tenderly limned people of Arcos and the streets, buildings, caves, and tunnels through which the very walls remember.

The struggle continues for the author as for others whose ancestors chose to convert rather than die or flee in 1492. "Who am I?" can be informed by genetic testing but is mostly a mosaic of clues from family memories and traditions. My friend seeks Israeli citizenship as a converted Jew and convinced Anusim; in "The Forgetting River", the author takes herself to that border of remembering.

As a story, the book is a page-turner. It is always well written as one would expect from an accomplished journalist and author. It is, however, at times thinly written, and perhaps would have benefitted from including more voices than her own. None-the-less, highly recommended for what it is and for all who are drawn to history, in part for Santana's "Those who forget the past, are doomed to repeat it." One estimate has about 20% of Spain--still that most Catholic country--are of Jewish blood.
In her two-star review, Miranda criticizes “that single threads of the book are separated from each other by other threads.” In my view, every single one of the two dozen chapters contributes important aspects of Doreen Carvajal’s story spanning from Spain to Costa Rica and over California and France back to Spain. In the patchwork structure of her narration, Doreen Carvajal mirrors the puzzle-like bit by bit completion of her recovered familiar history. As a skilled French/Spanish/English speaking journalist, she masters the art of writing, leading the writer ultimately to a sensible gestalt picture put together by 24 puzzle parts. Without the intention to write a scholarly book about Jewish identities broken or unbroken by Spanish inquisition – or recovered in modern times as in her personal case – she en passant conveys a colorful sketch of Europe’s anti-Jewish past from the Reyes Catolicos’ eviction edict of 1492 up to anti-Zionism of 2012. In her very down-to-earth way of reconstructing political within personal history, everything human from personal biographies to motor cycles and gastronomic recipes contributes to the whole, just as the subtle cloth embroideries are an important part of Pedro Berreguete’s painting of a stake burning that cleaves the landscape cover of Carvajal’s “The Forgetting River”. Whereas this book against forgetting appealed to me not least because of my similar rediscovery of familiar rootedness, Carvajal’s patchwork is rewarding for every reader defining herself or himself, in Viktor E. Frankl’s diction, as “man in search for meaning”.
Descended from Spanish colonials, Doreen Carvajal is convinced that her ancestors may have been conversos-- Spanish Jews forced into hiding during the Inquisition. To research her past she takes up residence in a small Andalusian town. Carvajal finds that even hundreds of hears later the issue of conversos is met with silence. Signs of Jewish communities have been hidden, and many are unwilling to talk about Spain's troubled past. Research has shown that Spain has unusually high levels of anti-Semitism. It has also shown that a significant portion of the population has converso ancestors. Spain's relationship with its Inquisition and its larger history of religious persecution is certainly an interesting one.

Carvajal writes beautifully about her Spanish town, its residents, and its customs. She is a strong believer in fate, in things happening for larger cosmic reasons, and genetic memory. Carvajal believes that the sense of belonging she feels in Andalusia is the result of awakening genetic impulses, long buried by the Carvajal family's colonial settlement in the Americas. She discovers all sorts of potential hidden messages in art and architecture, secret acts of resistance on the part of conversos. Some of these conclusions are more tenuous than others. I must admit that I have less of a belief in fate and genetic memory than the author, so I think I was a bit more skeptical of some assumptions. Still, the book is a pleasure to read. The subject matter is engaging, and the descriptions are beautiful.

I realize that this was not written as an academic text, but there were significant points at which I wanted more scholarly apparatus. I wanted to know what existing research and literature have to say. I wanted footnotes that I could dig into. There were things discussed generally that I wished were cited, so I could find out their origin. I suspect Carvajal was required to leave the scholarly heavy lifting out of the book by her publisher. I believe that was a mistake. That framework would have added tremendously to this book.