Author Archive
The Meaning of Parenting in Alistair MacLeod’s “The Boat”
We are often blind to the disparity between the behavior we instruct and the behavior we model for our children. But even more nuanced are the differences between the behaviors we try to emphasize—our aspirational behaviors—and the ones we try to downplay, which are often even more prominent.
Reading Palestine
As a translator, I am often asked about contemporary Palestinian literature, and find myself, a liberal Jew from Israel currently living in the US, at an embarrassing loss. Recently, I found my foray into contemporary Palestinian writing.
Death as the Villain in Pet Sematary
Beneath the waking nightmares, reanimated children, and mythological Wendigo, Stephen King’s 1983 novel is about a fundamental and universal experience: grief and the fear of death.
How Two Young Black Poets Are Making Sense of the World
The art of literacy may not be aggressive, but as Madison Petaway and Akilah Toney, two poets included in a recent New York Times feature, show, it can be assertive, assured, and bold.
The Lingering Effects of Trauma in A Chronology of Water, Something Disguised as Love, and Smadar
Our new understanding of how trauma lingers inside and outside of the body has expanded to include not only relationships between peers of the same age group, but seems to have grown over time to include a discussion of how adults teach children about their place in the world,
Acceptance in Love
Books by Sally Rooney, Anat Levit, and Daniel Sloss show us how to triumph over tension in relationships: rather than be at war with each other’s pet peeves, lovers share the pain—and perhaps a laugh—when admitting that love is anything but simple.
Parsing Identity in Grief in Himmo, King of Jerusalem
It is for her own future, for a possibility of life for her as well as for the other patients, that the painful reminder of Himmo—the broken, sightless, tortured embodiment of his own country—must be destroyed. Only then can she walk out into the smoking remains and start anew.
Tracing Ancestry in The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
Throughout his life, the kitchen was the place where truth always found Michael Twitty. It was where he first came out to his mother. Where he first felt kinship toward Jewish tradition. And where he decided to delve as deeply as possible into the culinary history of his ancestors.
The Things Left Unsaid in No Such Place
the end of Shifra Cornfeld’s book, it is up to readers to come up with the missing pieces of the puzzle. Whether this silence is part of Cornfled’s practice of empathy or a silent indictment of her characters’ behavior, what is left unsaid speaks volumes.
Manhattan Beach’s Portrayal of the Ocean
In Jennifer Egan’s 2017 novel, the ocean invites characters to dream beyond the confines of their own lives, to become a true part of the world.