Episode 58: Jordan Salama
On Rescuing his Family's “Historia Antigua”
Jordan Salama’s Five Books:
1. Even This I Get To Experience by Norman Lear
2. In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Larga Distancia by Tali Goldman (Spanish Language)
5. Stranger in the Desert by Jordan Salama
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.
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One Thanksgiving, when Jordan Salama was home from school, he noticed a thick binder in his grandfather's basement labeled “Historia Antigua”, which means ancient history in Spanish. Stuffed with photographs and documents, Jordan found that his grandfather had recorded hundreds of years of their family's history, covering movements and migrations between the Ottoman Empire and Argentina. This discovery sent Jordan on a quest to Argentina to discover the story of his great-grandfather, who had been a traveling salesman in the Andes in the early 20th century. The resulting book, Stranger in the Desert, was a finalist for the 2026 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.
In this episode, we discuss Jordan’s process of ‘climbing out of a linguistic hole’ by learning his family’s languages, the interconnected identities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ottoman Empire in Argentina, and how he teaches others to use the tools of journalism to discover their own family histories.
Jordan Salama is an author and a contributing writer at The New Yorker. He has written about migration, culture, and the environment in the Americas. His first book, Every Day the River Changes, about a journey down Colombia’s Río Magdalena, and the people who live along its banks, was named one of the best books of 2021 by Kirkus Reviews, and a top new travel book by the New York Times.
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