Reading Selections
-
The
Book of Memories by Ana Maria Shua
The Book of Memories by Ana Maria Shua
narrates the migration of a Jewish Family from Poland to Buenos Aires,
Argentina and the challenges and transitions it faced there. Shua illustrates,
through her central characters, three generations of women, the commonalities
and differences of Jewish experience in Latin America with their cousins
in the United States who have made an important contribution to our national
literature and consciousness.
Book of Memories recommended by Achy Obejas
- Days
of Awe by Achy Obejas
Born
right in the heart of Castro's revolution, Alejandra is brought to North
America by her desperate parents, where she remains until her job brings
her back to Cuba, a land which awakens in her a vibrantly-told journey
of discovery.
- An
Hour in Paradise by Joan Leegant
A
former drug dealer turned yeshiva student faces his past while visiting a
dying AIDS patient. A disaffected young American in the ancient city of Safed
ventures in Kabbalist mysticism and gets more than he bargained for. Three
sisters - one a Hindu, one an Orthodox Jew, and one a struggling actress just
trying to get by - find unexpected happiness with the help of an unseen, yet
beloved, hand. Interspersed with these are tales of love lost and found -
between fathers and sons, old childhood sweethearts past their prime, and
strangers thrown together by circumstance and chance.
Joan Leegant Recommends:
- The
Complete Stories
by Bernard Malamud
In all his work, Malamud was concerned
to identify and dramatize a quality he spoke of as "the human." This quality
is found in the way his characters cling to hope against all reason, in
their capacity for sudden deep feeling and their awareness of the world's
comic indifference to their aspirations.
April
2005
-
The
English Disease by Joseph Skibell
Described as "a wildly funny novel that
is equal parts Philip Roth, Groucho Marx and Woody Allen," this novel
by award winning author Skibell, engages us in the search for identity
of a neurotic and talented Mahler expert as he contemplates divorce, parenthood
and human compassion.
Joseph Skibell Recommends:
-
Ragtime
by E.L. Doctorow
An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime
captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the
century and the First World War. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous
escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole
outside their house, and almost magically, the line between fantasy
and reality disappears.