Nice Jewish Girls - by Grace Paley & Laura Shaine Cunningham & Dinah Berland & Persis Knobbe (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"While nearly every Jewish female reader will find herself reflected here, the poignancy of these stories will be felt by readers of all ethnicities."--Library Journal

Chicken soup and Barbra Streisand, lost fathers and first dates, Hebrew school and Queen Esther, seders and seductions. In this insightful, original anthology, forty-five American Jewish writers explore the richness of their shared heritage, from the tragic to the trivial.

In memoirs, fiction, and poetry new and favorite writers like Grace Paley, Amy Bloom, Vivian Gornick, and Laura Cunningham brilliantly reveal the challenges of coming of age as a Jewish woman in America today.

What have we lost that our mothers and grandmothers had? Do we still feel close ties to family and community? Can we make a decent pot roast?

This spirited collection is full of humor and wisdom, memory and affection--and there isn't a Jewish girl (nice or otherwise) who won't find herself reflected in these vibrant pages.

Review Quotes

"Stimulating... 40 contemporary women writers discuss the coming-of-age experience of the Jewish girl as she discovers who she is and how she got that way through family, community, and spiritual channels. Marks has gathered essays that allow Judaism to be viewed as much as an attitude toward life as a prescription of faith. While similar anthologies have dwelled on the bitterness Jewish women have felt because of their second-class status, this volume moves on to ask what it is that makes a young woman a Jew. The stories range from the tragic to the humorous, as in Alexandra J. Wall's 'The Way We Were, ' in which a young woman calls on Barbra Streisand to help her accept the physical facts of life. It is never too late to have a coming-of-age experience, as in Letty Cottin Pogrebin's 'I Don't Like To Write About My Father.' While nearly every Jewish female reader will find herself reflected here, the poignancy of these stories will be felt by readers of all ethnicities."--Library Journal

"Permeating a number of the pieces is a sense of being 'other, ' whether it's as a Jew in a Christian society (e.g., Kathryn Hellerstein's prep-school bout with the Christmas Chorale) or in one's alienation from tradition or other Jews (e.g., Shira Dicker's tale of a child taunted for belonging to the 'wrong' shul). Among the best of this literary congregation of excerpts, reprints and original pieces are Allegra Goodman's fictional account of a woman's far-flung geographic and spiritual journeys; Teresa Weisberg's oral history of a ludicrous wedding during the Depression; Karen Bender's reverie about being inside the Ark with the Torahs; and familiar excerpts by Laura Cunningham, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Vivian Gornick."--Publishers Weekly

"Troublesome body hair and 'the curse of a funny nose' figure prominently in this rich anthology of short fiction, personal essays and poems about life as a Jewish girl in America. But this is more than a mere catalog of teenage-female crises--after all, its 40 writers grew up a generation after the Holocaust. Aside from the effects of that central trauma, it also deals with such dilemmas as: interaction with the other--both the non-Jewish boyfriend at Christmas time, and the Orthodox childhood friend whose 'small and crowded' apartment reeks of 'meat cooking and garlic'; the conflict with patriarchal Judaism; and the Diaspora-Israel pull, which leads one woman to choose the former, 'because it made no demands on her.' Still, some of the most memorable pieces are humorous, among them Karen Golden's 'Big White Pushka, ' about a young girl who identifies a tampon dispenser in the Hebrew school bathroom as a gift-giving tzedakah box."--The Jerusalem Report

About the Author

Marlene Adler Marks, whose column, "A Woman's Voice," for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal revealed her many passions, from politics and education to cancer to hot dogs with sauerkraut, was the recipient of several Rockower and Smolar awards, the highest honors in Jewish journalism. She died in 2002.

Grace Paley was a short story writer, poet, pacifist, political activist, and professor. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction, the Edith Wharton Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award for Literary Arts. She died in 2007.

Laura Shaine Cunningham is a playwright and journalist whose fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, Vogue, and Mirabella, among other publications. The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships for her writing and theatrical work, Cunningham divides her time between New York City and her "place in the country."

Dinah Berland is a poet whose work has appeared in The Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and The Iowa Review, among other journals and anthologies. She lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a book editor for the J. Paul Getty Museum. Visit her on the Web at www.dinahberland.com.

Persis Knobbe is an author of short stories. She writes periodically about her journey with her late husband through the throes of Alzheimer's disease.