Gertrude Stein and the Making of Jewish Modernism - by Amy Feinstein (Paperback)

About the Book

Challenging the assumption that modernist writer Gertrude Stein seldom integrated her Jewish identity and heritage into her work, this book uncovers Stein's constant and varied writing about Jewish topics throughout her career. Amy Feinstein argues that Judaism was central to Stein's ideas about modernity, showing how Stein connects the modernist era to the Jewish experience.

Book Synopsis

Challenging the assumption
that modernist writer Gertrude Stein seldom integrated her Jewish identity and
heritage into her work, this book uncovers Stein's constant and varied writing
about Jewish topics throughout her career. Amy Feinstein argues that Judaism
was central to Stein's ideas about modernity, showing how Stein connects the
modernist era to the Jewish experience.

Combing through Stein's scholastic writings, drafting
notebooks, and literary works, Feinstein analyzes references to Judaism that
have puzzled scholars. She reveals the never-before-discussed influence of
Matthew Arnold as well as a hidden Jewish framework in Stein's epic novel The Making of Americans. In Stein's
experimental "voices" poems,
Feinstein identifies an explicitly Jewish vocabulary that expresses themes of
marriage, nationalism, and Zionism. She also shows how Wars I Have Seen, written in Vichy France during World War II,
compares the experience of wartime occupation with the historic persecution of
Jews.

Affirming
the importance of Jewish identity and modernist style to Gertrude Stein's
legacy as a writer, this book radically changes the way we read and appreciate
Stein's work.

Review Quotes

"Reads Stein's large and difficult oeuvre with the care and perceptiveness it deserves. . . . Feinstein's book clarifies that Jewishness was crucial and central to Stein's art."--AmericanJewishStudies.org

"Shows the centrality of Stein's understanding of Jewish identity and language in her work."--Modernism/modernity

About the Author

Amy Feinstein teaches English in the New York City public schools.