Customer Reviews

Chicken Dreaming Corn

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I just finished reading "Chicken Dreaming Corn" by Roy Hoffman and found it a most satisfying read. As a lifelong resident of the Mobile, Alabama area myself, I have often thought that the multicultural origins of the great port cities of the Southern United States are not well understood by our neighbors in other parts of the country. As I have travelled, I have often had comments on my lack of stereotypical southern accent and have found myself explaining that Mobile is a city with origins and cultural influence from around the world. It continues to be so today. Certainly, as portrayed in this book, we have a microcosm of the American experience. Also, this book tells once again the poignant story of the human experience...the hopes and dreams of a man for his life and for his children's lives weighed down as always by those things which we simply can't change. If you would like to walk in the shoes of a Southern Jewish American dress salesman who lives over his store on a street in a Southern port city with his children and wife in the first half of the twentieth century and whose smoking companions include a Cuban cigar maker, a German furniture salesman,and a Greek baker, then you will enjoy escaping back in time with Roy Hoffman for a few hours. Thanks Mr. Hoffman.

Chicken Dreaming Corn gave me, an American with Romanian ancestory who now resides in the south, insight into the roots of our family values and the guiding themes of that particular generation of immigrants' lives. The compelling story is carried mainly by the immediate love the reader feels toward the main and certainly most realized of Hoffman's characters, Morris Kleinman. The story is crafted in such a way that Hoffman leads the reader seamlessly through the important events in Morris' life in such a way that flashbacks and backstory never seem contrived. The reader is privy to the building of Morris' character as well as his lapses into weakness. He is both inspirational and steadfast, an everyday hero because he lives strongly by the themes of his generation: family, hardwork, pride, humanity, and strength. These are personified in the Morris' actions against the monumental difficulties in his life, difficulties that he never lets stand in his way.

The story could have been deepened for me if Hoffman had given a bit more attention to the personality of Morris's fellow store owner and life long friends as well as the other people in his family and town. Though he touches on a few of these characters, I feel that he let a many of them drop and did not satify me with the depth of relationship that Hoffman implied. Many of the subplots moved too quickly for me and could have been strengthened without remotely risking a rambling story. Hoffman's writing is vivid and concise, but a bit too concise, sometimes leaving me just wanting to get back to Morris because I could not sink my teeth into the other characters.

Despite this, Chicken Dreaming Corn is a worthy read and has definitely taken a unique bend on two thoroughly written about experiences: that of the American south and that of the greatest, absolutely greatest, generation.

Morris Kleinman has travelled from his native Romania to New York and now to the port city of Mobile, Alabama, to raise his family and start his fortune.

The journey from the Old World wasn't easy for father Morris but he has brought with him the virtues of hard work and a mighty faith in God. These mores, along with the many opportunities in a young country, may just give this Jewish shop owner a chance at a better life.

While the Kleinman family fares better than they would in their homeland, where Jews are under the iron shackles of Anti-Semitism, their lives are still dominated by cultural prejudice, financial hardship and tragedy.

The story starts in 1916 and takes the reader through nearly 30 years of family history; through two world wars and the Great Depression. The sacrifices required to live through tough times are a major theme in the book. One has to be taken by how recent arrivees to America have such a love of country even as their own lives are so trying.

Another interesting aspect of the book is the friendships that Morris forges with blacks and immigrants like Cubans in his downtown neighborhood. There is a strong sense of community among these people, who have little more in common than the place they have chosen to make a new life. Highly recommended.

Chicken Dreaming Corn is a heartwarming but not simple tale of first generation immigrants. The backstory we receive through flashbacks that provide ever deeper understanding of the current struggles.
Morris is the center of the family and the story: everything is viewed through the prism of his understanding. The children end up predictably rejecting their heritage, but in time, they take their places in their family's future.
A great read, I finished it in two days & will look for more by Roy Hoffman

Sweetly written and possessing a distinctive charm, Roy Hoffman's paean to Southern Jewish immigrant life is a novel of missed opportunities. Its title, "Chicken Dreaming Corn" draws from a Romanian idiom speaking to our universal anguish over unfulfilled dreams. Ironically, Hoffman's novel sadly mirrors the perpetually hungry chicken, wistfully dreaming of a full stomach only to live with a growling hunger.

At its best, "Chicken" captures the wistful and frequently derailed hopes immigrants cherish as they climb -- at first on the lowest rungs and then, slowly, clumsily up -- the ladder of economic betterment and social acceptance. Lamentably, however, Hoffman's story is predictable, his characters lack depth, and his insights are not particularly new or instructive.

"Chicken" chronicles the life of Morris Kleinman, who flees his Romanian homeland in the wake of anti-Jewish pogroms and arrives, fully of hope and ambition, in America. He ultimately arrives in the multi-ethnic Southern port city of Mobile, Alabama, where he sets up shops and raises a family. Full of optimism and genuine decency in his business dealings, Morris rejoices in the small victories he earns in his Dauphin Street neighborhood. There, other immigrants scratch their way out of poverty and grapple with the now-familiar burdens of assimilation, identity reformation and generational conflict.

Kleinman loves America but cannot shake his Old World roots. He emerges as a lovable Dixie Teyva, shrugging his shoulders at adversity and arguing amiably in Yiddish with his God. He doggedly sweeps clean the sidewalk in front of his dry-goods/furniture store. Hoffman painfully points out this blatantly symbolic daily ritual; no matter how hard Morris works to cleanse his life of unwelcome clutter and painful memories, debris and disaster reoccur. Death is a constant companion, first claiming his immediate family and then extending its grasp to friends and foes alike. Disappointments land like calculated blows on his already overburdened shoulders; his oldest son seethes with resentments and his youngest son shows little interest in sustaining his father's business. One of the unsettling realizations Morris is compelled to accept is that he never will be a true Confederate; his efforts at being a loyal son of the South are mocked by the impermeable anti-Semitism of his community.

It is this jagged confluence of a good man's attempts to understand and integrate himself in a new, alien community and his ultimate failure to dent deeply-held prejudices that Hoffman chose not to explore. This decision robs the novel of authenticity. The author never explains how Morris, the father, responds to his son's confrontation with the Klan. Hoffman inexplicably turns away from analyzing Morris' transformation from being a jovial-Jewish good-guy creditor to a more modern, hard-handed businessman. Instead, Hoffman seems content to have Morris learn how to grow a spine by osmosis from his oldest son, Abraham.

"Chicken Dreaming Corn" doesn't bother with fleshing out female characters. The long-suffering Miriam steadfastly stands by her man while simultaneously mourning the loss of her real love, Brooklyn. Appropriately named Aunt Fanny really serves no other purpose than existing as a sexual fantasy for Kleinman's youngest son. By the time she finally emerges as an intriguing, complex woman, Fanny still serves as but a foil to the son's developing social conscience.

Just as creamed corn is a quintessential comfort food, "Chicken Dreaming Corn" is easy to swallow but provides no true sustenance. Lacking nuance, the novel travels fast but arrives nowhere. Southern Jewish memoirists have surveyed the territory Roy Hoffman has claimed with far more accuracy and integrity. While earnest and easy to absorb, this novel is best seen as an unfulfilled dream.