Reviews
"Stimulating... 40 contemporary women writers discuss the coming-of-age experience of the Jewish girl as she discovers who she is and how she got that way through family, community, and spiritual channels. Marks has gathered essays that allow Judaism to be viewed as much as an attitude toward life as a prescription of faith. While similar anthologies have dwelled on the bitterness Jewish women have felt because of their second-class status, this volume moves on to ask what it is that makes a young woman a Jew. The stories range from the tragic to the humorous, as in Alexandra J. Wall's 'The Way We Were,' in which a young woman calls on Barbra Streisand to help her accept the physical facts of life. It is never too late to have a coming-of-age experience, as in Letty Cottin Pogrebin's 'I Don't Like To Write About My Father.' While nearly every Jewish female reader will find herself reflected here, the poignancy of these stories will be felt by readers of all ethnicities."-- Library Journal "Permeating a number of the pieces is a sense of being 'other,' whether it's as a Jew in a Christian society (e.g., Kathryn Hellerstein's prep-school bout with the Christmas Chorale) or in one's alienation from tradition or other Jews (e.g., Shira Dicker's tale of a child taunted for belonging to the 'wrong' shul). Among the best of this literary congregation of excerpts, reprints and original pieces are Allegra Goodman's fictional account of a woman's far-flung geographic and spiritual journeys; Teresa Weisberg's oral history of a ludicrous wedding during the Depression; Karen Bender's reverie about being inside the Ark with the Torahs; and familiar excerpts by Laura Cunningham, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Vivian Gornick."-- Publishers Weekly "Troublesome body hair and 'the curse of a funny nose' figure prominently in this rich anthology of short fiction, personal essays and poems about life as a Jewish girl in America. But this is more than a mere catalog of teenage-female crises--after all, its 40 writers grew up a generation after the Holocaust. Aside from the effects of that central trauma, it also deals with such dilemmas as: interaction with the other--both the non-Jewish boyfriend at Christmas time, and the Orthodox childhood friend whose 'small and crowded' apartment reeks of 'meat cooking and garlic'; the conflict with patriarchal Judaism; and the Diaspora-Israel pull, which leads one woman to choose the former, 'because it made no demands on her.' Still, some of the most memorable pieces are humorous, among them Karen Golden's 'Big White Pushka,' about a young girl who identifies a tampon dispenser in the Hebrew school bathroom as a gift-giving tzedakah box."-- The Jerusalem Report
Table of Content
Nice Jewish GirlsIntroduction by Marlene Adler Marks Part One: "With all your heart..." Aunt Rose's Child, by Jane Schulzinger Fox Grinder, by Sharon Pomerantz In This Country, But in Another Language, My Aunt Refuses to Marry the Men Everyone Wants Her To, by Grace Paley Comfort, by Jennifer Futernick Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines, by Amy Bloom The Secret, by Ilana Girard Singer Baba, by Susan Terris Baby-Sitting, by Jane Bernstein Names, by Jane Yolen The Get, by Carolyn A. Rogers Grandma, by Laura Cunningham Theresa Weisberg's Wedding, As Told to her daughter, Ruth Weisberg Part Two: "With all your soul..." Home for Winter, by Marcia Falk Big White Pushka, by Karen Golden If Only I'd Been Born a Kosher Chicken, by Jyl Lynn Felman Kiddush Cup, by L. Schimel Watchman, What of the Night? by Miriyam Glazer Shema, the First Prayer You Learn, by S. L. Wisenberg V'ahavta, by Kaern E. Bender the mourner, by tova Inside the Ark, by Karen E. Bender Prayers, by Judith Ungar A Jewish Education, by Kathryn Hellerstein Part Three: "With all your might..." Schmutz, by Sara Nuss-Galles My Father's Kichel, by Enid Shomer Down on the Farm, by Shirley Polinsky Fein I dream of railway stations, by Carol V. Davis Sephirot, by Dinah Berland My Grandma Had a Lover, by Carolyn White The Discovery, by Belinda Cooper Part Four: "When you lie down, when you rise up..." The Nose-Fixer, by Persis Knobbe That's Ridiculous, by Vivian Gornick The New Girl, by Shira Dicker Mutatis Mutandis, by Sheila Schwartz The Way "We" Were, by Alexandra J. Wall The Wandering Jewess - 20th-Century Style, by Hindi Brooks Desert Song, by Jori Ranhand The One Who Receives, by Dina Elenbogen Blood in the Sand, by Susan Merson Onionskin, by Allegra Goodman Sleepwalking Through Suburbia, by Fern Kupfer Needlepoint, by Erica Jong Silent Night, by Joan Lipkin I Don't Like to Write About My Father, by Letty Cottin Pogrebin legacy, by cynthia morse Macaroni and Cheese, by Marlene Adler Marks
