American Born
An Immigrant's Story, a Daughter's Memoir
by Rachel M. Brownstein
Pub Date 30 Mar 2023
University of Chicago Press
Biographies & Memoirs | History | Nonfiction (Adult)
I am reviewing a copy of American Born through University of Chicago Press and Netgalley:
Reiser Thaler arrived alone in New York in 1924, she was only eighteen. She resembled the other Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe who accompanied her. But she already had an American passport tucked in her scant luggage. Reisel had drawn her first breath on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1905, then was taken back to Galicia (in what is now Poland) by her father before she turned two. She was, as she would boast to the end of her days, “American born.”
Rachel M. Brownstein, The distinguished biographer and critic began writing about her mother Reisel during the Trump years, dwelling on the tales she told about her life and the questions they raised about nationalism, immigration, and storytelling. For most of the twentieth century, Brownstein’s mother gracefully balanced her identities as an American and a Jew. Her values, her language, and her sense of timing inform the imagination of the daughter who recalls her in her own old age. The memorializing daughter interrupts, interprets, and glosses, sifting through alternate versions of the same stories using scenes, songs, and books from their time together.
I give American Born five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
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