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The poems in Birthright embody multiple legacies: genetic, historical, religious, and literary. Through the lens of one person's experience of inheritance, the poems suggest ways in which all of us may be influenced by how we perceive and process our lives and times. Here, a poet claims what is hers as a child of her particular parents; as a grandchild of refugees from Nazi Germany; as a Jew, a woman, a Gen Xer, and a New Yorker; as a reader of the Bible and Shakespeare and Flaubert and Lucille Clifton. This poet's birthright is as unique as her DNA. But it resonates far beyond herself. Erika Dreifus's poems in Birthright are about the skull and the heart, the bone, and the muscle. They are ...
A high-ranking Nazi's wife and a Jewish doctor in prewar Berlin. A Jewish immigrant soldier and the German POWs he is assigned to supervise. A refugee returning to Europe for the first time and the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. A son of survivors and technology's potential to reveal long-held family secrets. These are some of the characters and conflicts that emerge in QUIET AMERICANS, in stories that reframe familiar questions about what is right and wrong, remembered and repressed, resolved and unending.
From the award-winning author of The Book of V., an unflinching, lushly imagined love story set against the backdrop of the epic frontier When 16-year-old Minna Losk journeys from Odessa to America as a mail-order bride, she dreams of a young, wealthy husband, a handsome townhouse, and freedom from physical labor and pogroms. But her husband Max turns out to be twice her age, rigidly Orthodox, and living in a one-room sod hut in South Dakota with his two teenage sons. The country is desolate, the work treacherous. And most troubling, Minna finds herself increasingly attracted to her older stepson. As a brutal winter closes in, the family's limits are tested, and Minna, drawing on strengths s...
In settings from Jerusalem to Manhattan, from the archaeological ruins of the Galilee to Kathmandu, The Pale of Settlement gives us characters who struggle to piece together the history and myths of their family’s past. This collection of linked short stories takes its title from the name of the western border region of the Russian empire within which Jews were required to live during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Susan, the stories’ main character, is a woman trapped in her own border region between youth and adulthood, familial roots in the Middle East and a typical American existence, the pull of Jewish tradition and the independence of a secular life. In “Helicopter...
Neuroscience and psychoanalysis are historically opposed responses to the age-old quest to understand ourselves—one focused on the brain and the other on the mind. As part of a pioneering program to look for common ground between the two warring disciplines, Casey Schwartz spent one year immersed in psychoanalytic theory at the Anna Freud Centre, and the next year studying the brain among Yale’s cutting-edge neuroscientists. She came away with a clear picture of the distance between the two fields: while neuroscience is lacking in attention to lived experience, psychoanalysis is often too ephemeral and subjective. Armed with this awareness, Schwartz set out to study the main pioneers in the emerging and controversial field of neuropsychoanalysis. With passion and humor, she makes a trenchant argument for a hybrid scientific culture that will allow the two approaches to thrive together.
Beginning with the challenges of how his White father and Black mother met, with their desire "to run away and start fresh and new"-resulting in a sometimes "pretend family"-to a near-archetypal description of his grandfather having just cut the grass as the author watches with a swollen lip and a black eye, to incessant moments in which different expressions of masculinity get inculcated, Davon Loeb frequently captures the disturbing poesy of life growing up. With painstaking detail, this work is in the vein of James McBride's 'The Color of Water', Justin Torres's 'We the Animals', and Jamaica Kincaid's 'Annie John', 'The In-Betweens' is a meditation on bruise and healing. Loeb's struggles become snapshots of how transformation occurs even where shards have been piled, where one waits "for something to happen, like flashes of red and blue sirens pulsing." A truly extraordinary new voice! Roy G. Guzmán, author of 'Restored Mural for Orlando'
To Julie Metz, her mother, Eve, was the quintessential New Yorker. It was difficult to imagine her living anywhere else except the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In truth, Eve had endured a harrowing childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna, though she rarely spoke about it. Yet after her passing, Julie discovered a keepsake box filled with farewell notes from friends and relatives addressed to a ten-year-old girl named Eva, her mother. This was the first clue to the secret pain that Julie's mother had carried as an immigrant, and it shed light on a family that had to rely on its own perseverance to escape the xenophobia that threatened their survival. A beautiful blend of personal memoir and family history, Metz shows how one woman's search for her mother's lost childhood offers valuable lessons about the sacrifices people make to save their families during some of the darkest times in history.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER, NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING KEIRA KNIGHTLEY In the bitter winter of 1946, Rachael Morgan arrives in the ruins of Hamburg. Here she is reunited with her husband Lewis, a British colonel charged with rebuilding the shattered city. As they set off for their new home Rachael is stunned to discover that Lewis has made an extraordinary decision: they will be sharing the grand house with its previous owners, a German widower and his troubled daughter. In this charged atmosphere, enmity and grief give way to passion and betrayal. 'This masterly novel wrings every drop of feeling out of a gripping human situation.' Mail on Sunday 'Superb. Conjures surprise after surprise' Guardian 'Excellent, original, masterly. A captivating tale not only of love among the ruins but also of treachery and vengeance' Literary Review 'Profoundly moving, beautifully written. Ponders issues of decency, guilt and forgiveness' Independent 'Terrific. Suspicion, resentment and misunderstanding haunt this city. Richly atmospheric' Sunday Telegraph
This cookbook features recipes for German-Jewish cuisine as it existed in Germany prior to World War II, and as refugees later adapted it in the United States and elsewhere. Because these dishes differ from more familiar Jewish food, they will be a discovery for many people. With a focus on fresh, seasonal ingredients, this indispensable collection of recipes includes numerous soups, both chilled and hot; vegetable dishes; meats, poultry, and fish; fruit desserts; cakes; and the German version of challah, Berches. These elegant and mostly easy-to-make recipes range from light summery fare to hearty winter foods. The Gropmans-a mother-daughter author pair-have honored the original recipes Gab...
"Originally published in Great Britain by Persephone Books"--Title page verso.