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Maybe someday
42
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
17/100Critics
67/100Scholars
Author:
Ilan Stavans, Josh Lambert
Publisher:
Restless Books
Date:
January 21, 2020
Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendakâs Where the Wild Things Are based on Holocaust survivors? And how has Yiddish, a language without a country, influenced Hollywood? These and other questions are explored in this diverse anthology of the interplay of Yiddish and American culture, edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert.
What The Reviewers Say
Within this impressive anthology of Yiddish publications from the early 1900s to the present, the reader is exposed to an array of expressive styles.
This volume is not a chronological exploration of the Yiddish language in America. Instead, the editors offer portions of some of the major works of Yiddish literature, poetry, comics, and political thought, by writers including Isaac Bashevis Singer, Chaim Grade, Cynthia Ozick, and Sophie Tucker, among others. A delightful chapter concentrates on culinary offerings with some recipes included. Finally, a fascinating chapter focuses on the influence of Yiddish in Canada, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia, offering a glimpse of Yiddishkeit outside Eurocentric views.
...an impressive collection of essays, fiction, drama, memoir, poetry, cartoons, and interviews, all showing how 'Yiddish is so deeply woven into the fabric of the United States that it can sometimes be difficult to recognize how much it has transformed the world we live in today'.
...as Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert’s rich and multifaceted anthology shows in detail, becoming American meant leaving behind much of what defined European Jewry, Yiddish included.
