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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Peddler's Grandson - Growing Up Jewish in Mississippidi Edward Cohen
Jewish Books (134) Sto caricando le informazioni...
Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Although the title of this memoir describes its content, it belies the real universality of its themes. Cohen presents a boy learning about the unwritten rules of social norms outside his family and the struggles he has with where he belongs--in the community and larger world. Of course, we all must do this as we grow. In this case, the author is in a religious minority and a racial majority during a place and time that is going through tumultuous social change. His is both a sociological and a personal study, told with wisdom, humor and sensitivity. The ending felt a little trite to me, which is why I only gave it 4 stars. Overall, however, a very good read and much material for discussion and consideration. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Edward Cohen grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, the heart of the Bible Belt, thousands of miles from the northern centers of Jewish culture. As a child he sang "Dixie" in his segregated school, said the "sh'ma" at temple. While the civil rights struggle exploded all around, he worked at the family clothing store that catered to blacks. His grandfather Moise had left Romania and all his family for a very different world, the Deep South. Peddling on foot from farm to farm, sleeping in haylofts, he was the first Jew many Mississippians had ever seen. Moise's brother joined him and they married two sisters, raising their children under one roof, an island of Judaism in a sea of southern Christianity. In the 1950s, insulated by the extended family of double-cousins, Edward believed the world was populated totally by Jews--until the first day of school when he had the disquieting realization that he was the only Jew in his class. At times he felt southern, almost, but his sense of being an outsider slowly crystallized, as he listened to daily Christian school prayers tried to explain his annual absences to classmates who had never heard of Rosh Hashanah. At Christmas his parents' house was the only one without lights. In the seventh grade, he was the only child not invited to dance class. In a compelling work that is nonfiction throughout, but conveyed with a fiction writer's skill and technique, Cohen recounts how he left Mississippi for college to seek his own tribe. Instead, he found that among northern Jews he was again an outsider, marked by his southernness. They knew holidays like Simchas Torah; he knew Confederate Memorial Day. He tells a story of displacement, of living on the margin of two already marginal groups, and of coming to terms with his dual loyalties, to region and religion. In this unsparingly honest and often humorous portrait of cultural contradiction, Cohen's themes--the separateness of the artist, the tug of assimilation, the elusiveness of identity--resonate far beyond the South. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)976.2History and Geography North America South Central U.S. MississippiClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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Review written in March 2016 ( )