Born to a Jewish father and black mother who divorce before she is two, Oreo grows up in Philadelphia with her maternal grandparents while her mother tours with a theatrical troupe. Soon after puberty, Oreo heads for New York with a pack on her back to search for her father; but in the big city she discovers that there are dozens of Sam Schwartzes in the phone book, and Oreo's mission turns into a wickedly humorous picaresque quest. The ambitious and playful narrative challenges accepted notions of race, ethnicity, culture, and even the novelistic form itself.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Fran Ross has a witty way with words-Yiddish, black dialect, puns-and she strews them exuberantly throughout her episodic story, along with lists, tables, drawings, equations, menus ('Gefuellte Melonen') and Q-and-A exams." --Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Fran Ross (1935-1985) grew up in Philadelphia and lived in New York City. After graduating from Temple University with a B.S. degree in Theater Arts and Communication, she worked in advertising, penned television scripts, and wrote for comedian Richard Pryor. Harryette Mullen is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Richard Yarborough, editor of the Northeastern Library of Black Literature, is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Overlooked mulilinguistic odyssey,
By
This review is from: Oreo (Northeastern Library of Black Literature) (Paperback)
Oreo is the name of a brilliant black-and-Jewish girl who sets out in search of her father. The story is an absurd picaresque quest, overtly paralelling the journey of the Greek hero Theseus.
Oreo isn't for everyone. You'll enjoy Oreo if you like puns, enjoy linguistics, appreciate mythological allusions, or like thinking about the sociology and history of racism in America. The writing is full of multilingual puns and linguistic twists. I constantly felt that I might be missing some of the jokes due to ignorance of one or another language. To catch everything, one would need to know English, Black Vernacular English ("Jive"), Yiddish, German, French, Italian, and who knows what else. For example, one character in the book speaks entirely in English words, but used translated French idioms. Another typical example: a shopkeeper tucked his hands next to his "stove-bellied pot." Even Oreo's last name is a pun: Schwartz (German and Yiddish for "black"). Occasionally the writing snaps into the author's voice and becomes explicitly self-conscious. I enjoyed the variety of mental practices exercised by the characters--"head equations," rationalizations, and observation games to pass the time. Suggestions for readers: Do keep a Yiddish dictionary nearby (The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten was a good choice for me). Do review the story of the journey of Theseus (see Wikipedia or the author's key at the back of Oreo). Do not read the foreword before you read the book. The foreword (2000 printing, by Harryette Mullen) seems deliberately designed to suck the life out of the text. It's wordy, more analytical than insightful, and contains spoilers. I discovered Oreo through a 2011 review on NPR, which proclaimed it ahead of its time and one of the funniest works ever written. I agree that it's funny, but not that funny. I downgraded my rating due to one chapter of explicit pornography which added little to the story.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to follow and understand,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Oreo (Northeastern Library of Black Literature) (Paperback)
I heard a review for this book that said it was funny and a great read, but I found the writing style to be very hard to follow. There was too much unexplained jargon as well - I had been hoping to learn about Jewish and African American culture, but instead I was just confused.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Obnoxious,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Oreo (Northeastern Library of Black Literature) (Paperback)
I was so excited to get this book - and then so disappointed. It seems to me that Ross just inserted every Yiddish word she could come up with. It was so obnoxious I couldn't get through it.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
