One Summer in the Week of Itke K.

One Summer in the Week of Itke K. (Insel Verlag, 1971) is the first of Jeannette Lander's German-language novels. The year is 1942; the central character is fourteen-year-old Itke Kovsky, whose Polish-Jewish immigrant parents run a grocery store in a black section of Atlanta, Georgia. Translated here are the novel's opening chapter, which introduces Itke and her environment, and the penultimate chapter, which depicts Itke's estrangement from her family and culminates in a riot precipitated by the violent deaths of several members of the black community. Drawing on traditions of the American minstrel show and Yiddish theater to frame the chapters, Lander also uses poetic language, word-coinages, and a complex narrative strategy to emphasize the constructedness of the several worlds ("circles") that Itke inhabits. Itke's fascination with her black neighbors, especially the Kovskys' former housemaid Jimmie Lee, is often described by means of stereotypic images of African-Americans prevalent at the time. Another influence from outside the inner circle is Itke's Jewish cousin Sonny, visiting in Atlanta while on leave from the US Army. For a detailed and insightful analysis of this novel, see Leslie A. Adelson, Making Bodies, Making History: Feminism and German Identity (Nebraska, 1993), chapter 4, "Jews and Other 'Others': On Representations and Enactments." (JC)