Frankly Feminist - (Hbi Jewish Women) by Susan Weidman Schneider & Yona Zeldis McDonough (Paperback)

About the Book

"A groundbreaking Jewish feminist short story collection. Short story collections focusing on Jewish writers have typically given women authors short shrift. This new volume represents the best Jewish feminist fiction published in Lilith Magazine and does what no other collection has done before in its geographic scope. It showcases a wide range of stories offering variegated cultures and contexts and points of view: Persian Jews; a Biblical matriarch; an Ethiopian mother in modern Israel; suburban American teens; Eastern European academics; a sexual questioner; a Jew by choice; a new immigrant escaping her Lower East Side sweatshop; a Black Jewish marcher for justice; in Vichy France, a toddler's mother hiding out; and more. Organized by theme, the stories in this book emphasize a breadth of content. Readers will appreciate the liveliness of burgeoning self-awareness captured in each tale, and the occasional funny, call-your-friend-and-tell-her-about-it moment. Skip around, encounter an author whose other writing you may know, be enticed by a title, or an opening line. You will find both pleasure and enlightenment-and even perhaps revelation-within these pages"--

Book Synopsis

A groundbreaking Jewish feminist short story collection.

Short story collections focusing on Jewish writers have--no surprise--typically given women authors short shrift. This new volume represents the best Jewish feminist fiction published in Lilith magazine, and does what no other collection has done before in its geographic scope, its inclusion of twenty-first-century stories, and its Jewish feminist focus.

This collection showcases a wide range of stories offering variegated cultures and contexts and points of view: Persian Jews; a Biblical matriarch; an Ethiopian mother in modern Israel; suburban American teens; Eastern European academics; a sexual questioner; a Jew by choice; a new immigrant escaping her Lower East Side sweatshop; a Black Jewish marcher for justice; in Vichy France, a toddler's mother hiding out; and more.

Organized by theme, the stories in this book emphasize a breadth of content, and our hope is that in reading you'll appreciate the liveliness of the burgeoning self-awareness brought to life in each tale, and the occasional funny, call-your-friend-and-tell-her-about-it moment. Skip around, encounter an author whose other work you may know, be enticed by a title, or an opening line. We hope you'll find both pleasure and enlightenment--and sometimes revelation--within these pages.

Review Quotes

"Original, entertaining, thought-provoking, Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine will prove to be of special appeal to readers with an interest in Jewish themed literature and short story fiction. While especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, community, and academic library Jewish literature fiction and short story collections, it should be noted that Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine is also available in a digital book format."-- "Midwest Book Review"

About the Author

Susan Weidman Schneider is Lilith's editor-in-chief and was one of the magazine's founding mothers. She is the author of three acclaimed books, among them the groundbreaking Jewish and Female: Choices and Changes in Our Lives Today. Yona McDonough has been Lilith's fiction editor for over twenty years. She is also an award-winning author of eight novels, most recently Not Our Kind, published under the pen name Kitty Zeldis, and over thirty-five books for children.