Tessie and Pearlie: A Granddaughter's Story [Paperback]

Joy Horowitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 1997

In their touching story, two Jewish grandmothers--Tessie and Pearlie--share their wisdom, knowledge, and recipes to die for. Still close to their immigrant past and hardened by wars, the Depression, and discrimination, they teach us about living. And dying. They are the last of a breed--a generation passing but not likely to be forgotten.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this powerful memoir overflowing with warmth and humor, Horowitz, a freelance journalist, illuminates the lives of her two bubbes (Yiddish for "grandmothers"). Over the course of 18 months, she interviewed Pearlie, her mother's 93-year-old mother, in Santa Monica, Calif., and 94-year-old Tessie, her father's mother, in Queens, N.Y. Both women live alone and share an immigrant past and the physical impairments of old age; their personalities are very different. An orthodox Jew, Tessie boycotted Horowitz's wedding to a gentile, does not fear death, advocates a pragmatic approach to life and is a dynamite gin player. The more emotional Pearlie loves to dance, is still a great cook, wants to go on living and believes that religion is in the heart. Horowitz intersperses her grandmothers' accounts of their childhood poverty and reminiscences of love, sex and childbirth and her own struggle to come to terms with her dying father's lung cancer and her yearning for a spiritual comfort that she receives, in part, from talking to Tessie and Pearlie, "the smartest women I know." Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Horowitz chronicles a dying breed. Through narratives, letters, photographs, and recipes, she looks at the lives of her two Jewish grandmothers, each 93 years old. Stereotypes are based on something, and Tessie and Pearlie are quintessential Jewish mothers, worried about their children, pushing food as cure-alls, looking for threats against family and religion under every bed. But that's not all these women are. They are also stoic, wise, able to roll with the punches, and most of all, still involved with life. In telling her grandmothers' stories, Horowitz, a magazine writer, documents an era in which women stifled their own ambitions for the good of their families, learned about menstruation, sex, and menopause from their own experiences, and tried to reconcile strict religious beliefs with living in a modern society. Sociology aside, however, the stars are definitely Tessie and Pearlie themselves. Adorable, annoying, their conversations peppered with witticisms and Yiddish phrases, these two may be convinced that death is final, but on these pages, they've attained a bit of immortality after all. Ilene Cooper --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (May 5, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684833476
• ISBN-13: 978-0684833477
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #983,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joy Horowitz is a freelance journalist and former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Los Angeles magazine, and many other national publications. She graduated Harvard cum laude in 1975 and worked as a copy girl, sports writer and investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.

After stints as an investigative producer at the local CBS-TV news station in L.A. and feature writer at the Los Angeles Times, she received a Masters in Studies of Law (MSL) degree from Yale Law School in 1982.

She has been the recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her reporting on indoor air pollution for the Los Angeles Times, and Sunday Magazine Editors' Association award for her Los Angeles Times magazine article "Greetings from Pearlie and Tessie," which was the basis for her 1996 book, "Tessie and Pearlie: A Granddaughter's Story." In 2007, her second book, "Parts Per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School," was published and led to her being honored as an "environmnetal hero" in 2008 by the Environmental Relief Center in Los Angeles. That same year, she received an environmental journalism fellowship to study at the National Tropical Botanical Gardens in Hawaii.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Joy now lives with her husband and children and dog in Santa Monica, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An homage to old age, July 20, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: TESSIE AND PEARLIE: A Granddaughter's Story (Hardcover)

This is Joy Horowitz's tribute to her two jewish grandmothers. They are both in their 90's and as feisty and loving as can be. In a book full of wisdom, humor, and yes, recipes, there is a lingering sense of mortality as both bubbes tell their tales and wonder when death will claim them. This is a book for anyone who treasures the stories of years past, who loved to sit at their grandmother's knee as she told stories of years gone by. It will leave you at turns both happy and almost tearful as each grandmother grapples with the life she has lived and the fact that she won't be around much longer. Please read this book, it will help you as you look at the big picture of life and determine what is really important to you

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is THE book for anyone who plans to grow old., February 16, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: TESSIE AND PEARLIE: A Granddaughter's Story (Hardcover)

"Tessie and Pearlie" is Joy Horowitz' love letter to and about her two grandmothers, both in their 80s: one is Catholic, one is Jewish; one thinks life is for living (she broke her arm dancing to "Achy Breaky Heart"; one feels not just alone, but lonely, and sits in her apartment waiting to die; one adored her husband, one resigned herself to her marriage because -- when she was young -- there were no options; one lives in New York, one lives near the beach in Santa Monica. These two ladies couldn't be more different; at the same time, they couldn't be more alike. This book is a paean, a valentine, a love song, a bridge between the past and the future. At the same time Joy is dealing with the vagaries of old age as she tries to gain insight into the lives her grandmothers led before they BECAME grandmothers, she is dealing with the pain of her own miscarriage and the joy and trials of her own children. The is a book for anyone who has ever known/dealt with/ loved/been driven crazy by someone elderly, anyone whose ambitions include growing old, anyone who is either curious or fearful (or both) about what their own old age may be like. This you should know: This book will bring a tear to the eye and a lump to the throat. Read. Enjoy.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As Bill Withers said, "I loved that old lady.", March 9, 2000

By 

amrdmr "amrdmr" - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tessie and Pearlie: A Granddaughter's Story (Paperback)

Not since Bill Withers' song, "Grandma's Hands" has there been such a touching tribute to a "bubbe", the Yiddish word for grandmother. Or, in this lucky case, to BOTH her 90-something grandmothers. How I envied her the privilege, courage and perspicacity to ask these questions before it was too late! I shared many, many things with my beloved grandmother, but I wish with all my heart that I had done what Joy Horowitz did in "Tessie and Pearlie", to search out and record the stories of her grandmothers' lives, what made them who they are, what their lives mean to her own life, to her children's lives. Joy Horowitz did, indeed, build an amazing, bittersweet bridge between her family's past and future and created a truly precious legacy for her own children and subsequent generations of her family. Especially when one is young, it is very often difficult to let go of the irritations and inconsistencies you see in your parents and grandparents and really communicate with them. It is usually in middle age that the sense of one's mortality overcomes these quibbles and by then, for most, it is too late for grandparents. If you are now fortunate enough to have a living grandmother, seize the moment. Read this book, put on Bill Withers and cry and - and then go call her up and ask and ask and listen and listen. Then write it down for posterity and marvel at the blessing.