Nice Jewish Girls: Growing Up in America [Paperback]

Grace Paley (Author), Laura Shaine Cunningham (Author), Dinah Berland (Author), Persis Knobbe (Author), more (Author), Susan Merson (Author), Marlene Adler Marks (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1996

Forty female writers discuss, in poem, story, and memory, the trials and tribulations of growing and maturing as a Jewish-American female in a unique anthology.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This mixed but mostly marvelous collection of essays, fiction and poetry touches on the issues of being female and Jewish in America. 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. There are some weaker works (notably Erica Jong's trite poem) and some omissions: Where, for example, are Cynthia Ozick, Blu Greenberg or Rebecca Goldstein? This may be caviling. As Marks points out in her introduction, many male "archetypes of Jewish womanhood" have been "fatally demeaning." (Think Sophie Portnoy, Brenda Patimkin or Marjorie Morningstar). So, even if this anthology isn't the final word on the experience of Jewish women in America, it is a welcome antidote to the old and a good start.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this stimulating collection, 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.
Marcie S. Zwaik, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Plume; Softcover Ed edition (April 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452273978
• ISBN-13: 978-0452273979
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #685,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent colllection of heart felt personal stories., September 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Nice Jewish Girls: Growing Up in America (Paperback)

Probably the best and most complete description of what it means to grow up Jewish and female in America during the twentieth century. I especially liked the very personal and well written account of a death in the family written by Jennifer Futernick

3.0 out of 5 stars Dark stories of growing up Jewish., September 13, 2009

By 

Sheila L. Ornstein (Highland Mills, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nice Jewish Girls: Growing Up in America (Paperback)

Most of the stories were very sad and depressing. I do not feel it fully represented what it meant to be a girl growing up in a Jewish household. There was none of the love and warmth that I and many of my friends remember. Of course it was difficult to be an adolescent, but that is the experience of all young people. I just do not feel the stories really represented what the book let me to believe.

4.0 out of 5 stars A very nice collection, March 4, 2006

By 

Em (Atlanta, Ga USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nice Jewish Girls: Growing Up in America (Paperback)

As a jewish girl myself, the title of this book interested me. so many of the themes and ideas in this book were important and relevant to my life. some of the stories and poems are not as good as others, but many show promising talent from the jewish women of america.