The book examines the modalities of witnessing in the works of Charles Reznikoff. Associated with the so-called "Objectivist" group created in New York in the early 1930s, Reznikoff is often called a poet-witness because the material he draws on in his poetry and, to a lesser extent in prose, comes from his observations of urban life and from authentic testimonies he found in archives. Yet, the process of turning eye-witnessed situations and contents of depositions given by other witnesses into literary texts is far from objective. In particular, Reznikoff's use of archival material is informed by subtly camouflaged manipulation. To demonstrate various degrees of this change, the book centers on a comparative juxtaposition of the poet's works with the original documents.

The contributors understand the wild zone as denoting the existence and experience of a group (ethnic, social, sub-cultural, sexual, religious, etc.) which is/was marginalized in American society. Reaching far beyond the boundaries of original agenda (Edwin Ardener's and Elaine Showalter's), the term's applicability has been significantly enlarged. Its fluidity or fuzziness, however, ought to be taken as a blessing: in the rapidly changing contemporary ("liquid") world it is the language that needs to keep up with new circumstances and developments, not the other way round.

The book adds new studies of memories and interactions between Jews and non-Jews to the historical and cultural research on this topic. It gathers in one volume the results of work by scholars from several countries, while the topics of the articles cover various disciplines: history, sociology, psychology, literary and language studies. The specific themes refer to the cultures and interactions with non-Jews in places such as Kiev, Vienna, Ireland, Springfield, Sosua as well as reflect upon interactions in literary texts by Czeslaw Milosz and other Polish writers, some contemporary Jewish-American novelists and South American writers. Finally there are texts referring to the experience of the Holocaust and the post-Holocaust trauma as well as German-Israeli and Polish-Jewish relations and heritage.