Contemporary Jewish American Literature as a Phenomenon of Hybrid Identity

Contemporary Jewish American literature is the phenomenon that appeared due to the hybrid identity formed in the generations of the descendants of the Jewish immigrants who had to the USA mainly from the Russian Empire and other eastern European countries. Contemporary writers` native language is English, the identify themselves as American Jews. Thus, their national (American) and ethnic (Jewish) identity is reflected in their works. Very often they are not connected directly with any of Jewish languages. Jewish American literature is one of the most developed and widely famous ethnic segments of the contemporary multicultural literature of the USA. We can`t speak about it as the literature of the ethnic minority, as the authors, we are going to speak about represent American national literature today. At the same time, Jewish American literature definitely distinguishes itself from both American literature as a whole, and other Jewish literatures, including Israeli. We plan to focus our attention on the authors widely known all over the world whose works are translated into many languages: Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Woody Allen, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Michael Chabon, Allegra Goodman, and etc. We are going to speak about the motifs and themes which indicate a hybrid identity in the works of these authors: the perception and rethinking of the Holocaust and collective memory, the representation of Jewish American life, the reflection of widely spread Jewish stereotypes and Jewish humor.