From Publishers Weekly
In this stirring, thought-provoking collection, poet and essayist Klepfisz (coeditor of The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Woman's Anthology ; also see review below) examines issues "central to my experience as a feminist and lesbian, as a Jew sorting out my identity and my relationship to Jewish history, as an American Jew defining my relationship to events in the Middle East." A child of the Holocaust, Klepfisz raises disturbing questions about the trivialization of the Holocaust in the media, the erosion of secular Jewish culture and the resurgence of anti-Semitism in America. She also criticizes the Jewish community for its bias against gays ("As a lesbian I would be left standing outside the tribe"). In her most powerful essay, Klepfisz tells of visiting her father's grave in the neglected Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, where anti-Semitism thrives despite the absence of Jewish life. In other pieces, the author reflects on the moral issues surrounding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and celebrates her love of Yiddish and her ability to express herself in poetry that "transforms solitary silence and an empty page into sheer pleasure," enabling her to "break all the rules, invent her own forms."
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Irena Klepfisz was fourteen when she and her mother escaped from Poland to America during World War II, the only members of their family to survive the Holocaust. Among the twelve essays in this collection is "Resisting and Surviving America," in which she recalls that her "first conscious feeling about being Jewish was that it was dangerous, something to be hidden." Now, decades later, she questions how to comprehend what is meant when she hears academics and intellectuals speak of being "turned off by the Holocaust." In "Women Without Children/Women without Families/Women Alone," she examines the social and cultural meanings, messages, interpretations, and results of her decision to forgo motherhood. "The Distance Between Us: Feminism, Consciousness and the Girls at the Office" analyzes both the work and the relationships at work in an office. She notes how she has learned to stop admitting she has a PhD in order to be hired after a prospective employer worries she will get bored: "What deliberate ignorance and callousness to people - high school drop-out and Ph.D.... - would allow for the conclusion that anyone would find this work anything but boring?" In "Jewish Lesbians, the Jewish Community, Jewish Survival," she writes about the high costs of "passing" for what you think or worry others want you to be. Irene Klepfisz draws on her history of artistic and political commitment that has long informed her precise and well-loved poetry, and her words have the power to penetrate and awaken. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen
