I just finished The Situation and The Story: The Art of the Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick. It’s one of the many books on writing stacked up in my new Los Angeles “office.” And what a read, it was more than a little overwhelming. By critiquing a number of great writers, Gornick attempts to convey… Continue reading Reading about Writing
Bess Greenberg/New York TimesYosef Abrahamson, 16, right, with his mother, Dinah, and his sister, Sarah, near their home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. An recent article, “A Young Man From Omaha, Who May Perfectly Represent Brooklyn,” by Susan Dominus for the New York Times Big City section portrays an interesting picture of some Jews of Color… Continue reading Representing…
I recently received an email of a Jewschool post: It’s Our Turn to Help Hundreds of undocumented immigrants suffering under Agriprocessors’s labor practices were detained after a raid at Agriprocessors (Rubashkin’s) in Postville, Iowa. Many of their families have turned to the local Catholic church listed below for food and shelter. I found some local… Continue reading Workers Need Your Help!
Photo: TheFlowerExpert.com April’s JCC Talk on Jews of Color was as explosive as it was packed! Jews of all colors and walks of live attended. There were two speakers, a Latin American Conservative rabbinical student and Jewish convert (of Jewish ancestery) and a half-Chinese, half-White secular Jewish woman, Jen Chau, who heads Swirl, “a national… Continue reading Reflections on JCC Talk on Jews of Color
http://www.mimisammis.comhttp://www.mimisammis.com/ Hey, people, despite the last post, I promise you, I had a fantastic set of seders. Stop apologizing.My favorite seder was the second because my non-Jewish little sister got to experience her first seder with my in-laws in Los Angeles. But the first seder was great fun thanks to my husband’s aunt and her… Continue reading Seder Confusion
Father’s Day came a bit early for me this week. An excerpt of a short story, Daddy’s Little Girl, about my strange relationship with my father and the trip to the Dominican Republic that brought us back into each other’s lives after a nearly ten-year estrangement was published in Tertulia Magazine. Given the format of… Continue reading Happy Father’s Day?
So, I (sort of) survived the talk my husband and I gave on “race and Judaism.” No one fell asleep. But better yet, none of the thirty-plus attendees seemed offended and many stopped by afterwards to compliment us. The group of whites, blacks, Jews, had congregated together for this “Race, Society & the Jewish Community”… Continue reading Racism, Society, the Jewish community and all that jazz…
There is a point where you’ve probably revised too much and might be killing the writing in a piece, lucky for you, I haven’t gotten there yet with “The Girl in the Wetsuit” story. The story focuses on how I spend my spare time explaining cultural nuances, both Jewish and not, to the masses. It’s… Continue reading Going ghetto (getting violent and inappropriate) on revisions
In a Newsweek essay on race and the Hillary Clinton presidency, In The Legacy of My Grandmother, Allison Samuels writes that her family has been fighting against racism and not gender roles. “In her [grandmother’s] world, being a woman in control wasn’t something she had the luxury of deciding to fight for. She was. In… Continue reading The Jewish Feminist
“How do you feel about the fact that your baby looks nothing like you?” I asked a new acquaintance after being shocked by the dissimilarity between her face and the face of her interracial baby. While Mom is half-white, half-something else, baby is at least three quarters white and only 25% something else. Given these… Continue reading Baby Face
Memoirs of a Jewminicana 