Overview

Ten Dollars in My Pocket is both an American success story and a description of the painful maturation process of a belated teenager trying to discover who and where she is, and who is at least once on the verge of suicide. This account is unique because of the authenticity of its narrative voice: we read diary entries and letters written during those years, as well as several eyewitness accounts published by the author at that time. This kaleidoscope of factual information is complemented by the author's recollections and reflections.

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9780820486932

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Reviews

« The reader enters the author's archives of personal letters and diaries, travelogues, published first impressions of America, and highly relevant documents for a life starting anew. Interspersed with retrospective reflections, as intimate as self-critical, they show a courageous young woman conquering a bewildering but ultimately welcoming new world. Sharply drawn portraits of a most diverse cast of characters, from fellow immigrants and the working world of New York City to such distinguished teachers as Vladimir Nabokov and Rene Wellek, make this a memoir of irresistible vitality. -- Sigrid Bauschinger

This memoir offers a captivating portrait of US society in the early postwar years through the perspective of a sensitive and keenly perceptive young woman survivor of the Holocaust. The intertwining of a story of personal maturing with a difficult and humorously told acculturation process unfolds in a riveting way. Ample quotations from diaries and letters of that time give the remembered story an extraordinary immediacy. (Walter H. Sokel, Commonwealth Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia) The reader enters the author's archives of personal letters and diaries, travelogues, published first impressions of America, and highly relevant documents for a life starting anew. Interspersed with retrospective reflections, as intimate as self-critical, they show a courageous young woman conquering a bewildering but ultimately welcoming new world. Sharply drawn portraits of a most diverse cast of characters, from fellow immigrants and the working world of New York City to such distinguished teachers as Vladimir Nabokov and Rene Wellek, make this a memoir of irresistible vitality. (Sigrid Bauschinger, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts)

Author Information

The Author: Elizabeth Welt Trahan, born in Berlin, Germany in 1924, lived in Czechoslovakia from 1929 to 1939 and in Vienna until her departure for the United States in 1947 - a time chronicled in her memoir Walking with Ghosts: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Vienna (Peter Lang, 1998). With degrees in literature from Sarah Lawrence, Cornell, and Yale, she taught at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Pittsburgh, the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) (where she founded their now famous School of Translation and Interpretation and received an honorary doctorate), and at Amherst College until 1993. Her publications include textbooks, translations, studies in German, Russian and Comparative Literature, and translation and interpretation methodology. Currently, she is on the Steering Committee of the New England Chapter of the National Writers Union.

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