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Stavans has portrayed Jewish-American identity as Eurocentric and parochial. He has been a critic of the nostalgia in this community for the past of the Eastern European shtetls of the 19th century.

The Norton Anthology was deemed an "essential source for academic libraries". It was reviewed by The Boston Globe, Smithsonian, the American Book Review, World Literature Today, Literal, and NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook. Erica Jong said "Ilan Stavans has spread a feast of Latino literature before us." Cornel West called it "an instant classic." And Felipe Fernández-Armesto of University of Notre Dame stated: "Imaginatively conceived, painstakingly executed, stunningly broad, profoundly stirring, endlessly engaging, this book can change the way the world thinks about America and the way Americans think about themselves." It was also criticized for his subjective selection; there were few authors born in Central America. In 2019, the University of Pittsburgh Press published Steven G. Kellman's book-length study "The Restless Ilan Stavans: Outsider on the Inside."

Stavans's views on language are polemical in his approach to word and structure formation. Stavans believes that dictionaries and language academies are buffers whose improbable function is to provide continuity for a language. He suggests that such continuity, especially in the age of rapid electronic communication, is fatuous. He accuses the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in Madrid of colonialism, among other things. He has studied the Iberian conquest of the Americas in the 16th century from a linguistic perspective. Stavans believes that translation represents cultural appropriation. He defines modernity as "a translated way of life". He has written and lectured on the role translators perform as "communicating vessels" across epochs and habitats.

Stavans served as general editor of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, a 2,700-page compendium that includes more than two hundred authors and covers from the colonial period (the earliest author included is Fray Bartolomé de las Casas) to the present time. The anthology features Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Puerto Ricans on the island and the mainland, and other Latinos. It also features a section with samples by Latin American writers, such as Octavio Paz and Roberto Fernández Retamar, discussing the United States. Among the featured writers in the anthology are Daniel Alarcón, Julia Alvarez, Giannina Braschi, Julia de Burgos, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Junot Díaz, Cristina García (journalist), Oscar Hijuelos, José Martí, Octavio Paz, Luis Rodríguez, Rolando Pérez (Cuban poet), Esmeralda Santiago, and William Carlos Williams. He also coedited The FSG Book of Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry, (2011) a 728 page volume that contextualizes the history of Latin American poets, including José Martí, Rubén Darío, César Vallejo, Oswald de Andrade, Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra, Nicanor Parra, Gabriela Mistral, Luis Palés Matos, Octavio Paz, Giannina Braschi, and Roberto Bolaño.

Stavans has devoted many years of study to the work of Márquez. He wrote a biography, Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years (2010), the first of two planned volumes. Stavans traces the artistic development of Márquez from childhood to the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish in 1967 (it was translated by Gregory Rabassa and published in English in 1970). Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, described this biography as

In ACritic's Journey (2009), Stavans address three cultures: Jewish, American, and Mexican. It includes pieces on writing On Borrowed Words, the effects of the Holocaust in Latin America, the growth of Latino studies in the U.S. academy, Stavans's relationship with The Jewish Daily Forward, and translation in the shaping of Hispanic culture. He also includes pieces on writers Sandra Cisneros, Richard Rodríguez, Isaiah Berlin, and W. G. Sebald, and close readings of Don Quixote and the oeuvre of Roberto Bolaño.

In Love and Language (2007), Stavans and translator Verónica Albin discuss the way the word "love" has changed through the ages. In Knowledge and Censorship (2008), Stavans explains the "acquisition of knowledge in multi-ethnic environments, the role that dictionaries play in the preservation of memory, the function of libraries in the electronic age, and the uses of censorship." Canadian journalist Mordecai Drache, who writes for Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture, discusses with Stavans the Bible as a work of literature in With All Thine Heart (2010). Steven G. Kellman published The Restless Ilan Stavans: Outsider on the Inside (2019), the first book-length study of the author and his work.

Morirse está en hebreo / My Mexican Shivah (2006) Directed by Alejandro Springall.

In 2005, in a series of interviews with Neal Sokol published as Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations, Stavans traces his beginnings, and calls Hispanic civilization to task for its reluctance to undertake constructive self-criticism. In addition, he discusses the work of numerous writers: Borges, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, Giannina Braschi, Sholem Aleichem, Gabriel García Márquez, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Octavio Paz, Samuel Johnson, Edward Said, Miguel de Cervantes, and others. He also reflects on anti-Semitism and anti-Hispanic sentiment.

Stavans is a sociolinguist and who writes on Spanglish, the hybrid form of communication that emerges at the crossroads where Spanish and English speakers interact. He has edited a dictionary of Spanglish words called Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language (2003), which provides historical analysis of the development of this linguistic form and denote Spanglish use in literary works by Piri Thomas, Giannina Braschi, Sandra Cisneros, and Junot Díaz. Stavans says Spanglish first developed after 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed after the Mexican–American War ended and a large portion of Mexican land was ceded to the United States. There was much more interaction between Spanish and English speakers after that.

In 2002, Stavans published a Spanglish translation of the first chapter of Cervantes's Don Quixote de la Mancha in the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia. Stavans stated that Spanglish is today's manifestation of "mestizaje," the mixture of racial, social, and cultural traits of Anglos and Latinos, similar to what occurred during the colonization of the Americas in the sixteenth century.

He was the host of the syndicated PBS show Conversations with Ilan Stavans, which ran from 2001 to 2006.

His autobiography is entitled On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (2001). He is best known for his investigations of language and culture. His love for lexicography is evident in his memoir, Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion (2005).

Stavans has edited anthologies, including The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998). A selection of his work appeared in 2000 under the title The Essential Ilan Stavans. In 2004, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Pablo Neruda's birth, Stavans edited the 1,000-page-long The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. The same year he edited the 3-volume set of Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories for the Library of America.

In 1997, Stavans was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has also received international prizes and honors for his writings, including the Latino Literature Prize, Chile's Presidential Medal, and the Rubén Darío Distinction.

Stavans's work is includes both scholarly monographs such as The Hispanic Condition (1995), and comic strips, as in his graphic book Latino USA: A Cartoon History (with Lalo Alcaraz) (2000).

He is recognized for his explorations of Jewish culture in the Hispanic world. In 1994 he published the anthology Tropical Synagogues: Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers (1994). From 1997 to 2005 he edited the Jewish Latin America series published by the University of New Mexico Press. His anthology, The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature (2005), received a National Jewish Book Award. In his The Inveterate Dreamer: Essays and Conversations on Jewish Culture (2001), he explores Jewish writing in every major language, including variations such as Yiddish, Ladino, and others. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.

He married Alison, and they had two sons, Joshua and Isaiah. When Stavans completed his graduate education in New York City, the family settled in New England. Since 1993 he has been on the faculty at Amherst College, Massachusetts, where he is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture. He is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College. He has also taught at various other institutions, including Columbia University.

After living in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, Stavans immigrated to the United States in 1985. He earned a master's degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a Doctorate in Letters from Columbia University.

Ilan Stavans (born Ilan Stavchansky on April 7, 1961) is a Mexican-American essayist, lexicographer, cultural commentator, translator, short-story author, publisher, TV personality, and teacher known for his views of American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures. He is the author of Quixote (2015) and a contributor to the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (2010).

Ilan Stavans was born in Mexico in 1961 to a middle-class Jewish family; his father's ancestors had immigrated from the Russian Pale of Settlement. His parents were both born in Mexico City. His father, Abraham Stavans, had become a popular Mexican telenovela actor. His mother, Ofelia Stavans, taught theater.