A well-crafted anthology of musings from a giant of Jewish literature.
Stromberg offers newly translated essays by Nobel laurate Isaac Bashevis Singer that shed light on the Polish American author’s postwar transformation.
Singer’s novels, short stories, and essays not only garnered him the Nobel Prize for Literature, but also two National Book Awards, among a host of other accolades. He’s a leading figure in 20th century Yiddish literature, and his major works have been published in English translations, but not all of his mid-20th century musings. In this, the second volume of select Yiddish essays by Singer, translator and editor Stromberg focuses on a pivotal era of the writer’s intellectual development, from 1946 to 1955. Although The Family Moskat (1950) and other novels have driven much of the scholarly understanding of Singer during this period, Stromberg suggests that the writer’s lesser-known essays, published in the Yiddish newspaper Forverts under the pseudonym Yitskhok Varshavski, reveal a “total transformation,” as he questioned “everything he knew” about his Jewish faith and identity. This theme of “spiritual reappraisal” is seen throughout these essays, which blend an orthodox understanding of Jewish history and faith with frustration regarding contemporary Jewish movements and organizations, particularly among American Jews. Singer’s 1951 essay “What Is the Foundation of Jewish Culture?,” for example, highlights the growing number of people who “say they just happen to be Jewish” and “have the sense that being Jewish obliges them to nothing.” Another essay on Yiddish literature notes the dearth of writings on immigration, socialism, and other topics central to Jewish diasporic histories. “When Actions Achieve Nothing” offers a powerful reflection on the tension between religious systems that prioritize “the thought itself” and the more secularist prioritization of taking action.
Stromberg, a literary scholar who’s served as editor of the Isaac Bashevis Singer Literary Trust, has an intimate familiarity with the nuances of Singer’s idiosyncratic beliefs. The book’s introductory essay offers an astute survey of the author’s postwar changes, contextualizing this period by not only considering his seven decades of writing, but also by putting them in historical context. Singer’s inner tumult, Stromberg argues, paralleled the chaos of events in the world around him, from the Cold War and McCarthyism to the formation of Israel and post-Holocaust Zionism. Similarly, short editorial introductions place each essay in specific contexts within Singer’s life, such as his travels to Europe and Israel, and emphasizes their relevancy to 21st-century debates within Jewish communities. The translations themselves are accessible and admirably reflect Singer’s iconic style and vision of Jewish idealism. At the heart of this vision, reflected in both the author’s essays and Stromberg’s analysis, is the Yiddish language. Critiques of contemporary Jewish movements aside, Singer viewed Yiddish as both practically and spiritually important, hoping to “ensure not only that it will be possible to learn Yiddish but that people will want to learn it so they can gain access to its treasures.” By offering a glimpse of Singer’s own literary treasures, this volume usefully adds to readers’ understanding of a 20th-century icon.
A well-crafted anthology of musings from a giant of Jewish literature.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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