Final Project: Jewish American Literature

Jessica Halas
Final Project Book Reviews: Focus- Jewish American Literature

The three books I chose to represent literature of a traditionally underrepresented group are quality examples of Jewish American literature for children to young adults. Each author has chosen to tell an adapted version of a personal memory, all of which tell a unique story that is easily relatable, as well as enjoyable. Each book appropriately incorporates Jewish vernacular which not only enriches the story, but allows the audience to expand their knowledge base. However, the quest to find these books was not easy- it took a great deal of searching before stumbling upon such a rich group of texts. All of these texts encourage their readers to become apart of the Jewish culture by detailing one of a kind experiences. Jewish culture is extensive, with traditions and unity that deserves to be shared with all readers. I would recommend Patricia Polacco's The Keeping Quilt, Anna Olswanger's Shlemiel Crooks, and Elsa Okon Rael's Rivka's First Thanksgiving to be apart of any classroom, for any range of diverse readers.


Patrica Polacco’s The Keeping Quilt

Polacco, Patricia. The Keeping Quilt (Aladdin Picture Books). New York: Aladdin, 2001.

The Keeping Quilt is a touching narrative based on a first hand account of Patrica Polacco's own life experiences and one very special family heirloom. The story traces members of Polacco's family tree- following their journey from Russia to New York City, and later to Michigan. The story gives special mention to Jewish traditions, such as praying on the Sabbath, getting married under a huppa, and eating special foods like challah and kulich. The entire plot also manages to tie in a single quilt that has traveled between generations. Brown and black backgrounds allow the vivid colors of the quilt to really stand out in the entirety of the text. The ending of the book shows a heart-warming integration of American culture to Jewish past times. This book promotes readers to remember special family traditions, and do their best to incorporate them in everyday life; which easily relates to all cultures.

Anna Olswanger’s Shlemiel Crooks

Olswanger, Anna. Shlemiel Crooks. Montgomery: Junebug Books, 2005.

Shlemiel Crooks uses a comedic approach to introduce and explain Jewish history. Olswanger skillfully tells the story of Passover reaching all the way back to Israelites and Pharaoh, all through a creative storyline which proves to be entertaining for all ages. The shop owner of the story is a lose impersonation of Olswanger's own grandfather, using tidbits of information she discovered about him through newspaper articles. Large, close-up pictures help the reader to better visualize and become apart of the exciting storyline. The book skillfully tells a history lesson inside a delightful tale about the power and unity of a community against a couple of bad guys.


Elsa Okon Rael's Rivka's First Thanksgiving

Rael, Elsa. Rivka's First Thanksgiving. New York: Margaret K McElderry Books, 2001.

Rivka's First Thanksgiving is the story of one Jewish girls quest to introduce Thanksgiving to her family. After learning about the history of Thanksgiving in school, Rivka hopes to practice it within her own home but must ask the Rabbi for permission first. In order to explain the importance of Thanksgiving, Rivka compares the idea of the Pilgrims thankfulness to the Indians to those of Jewish decent being thankful to safe in America. Soft images of characters and their emotions line the pages of the book and help to tell Rivka's story. The book incorporates many Jewish phrases and words, and even provides a dictionary in the back that explains definitions and origins of those words. Rael bases the idea of this book on a personal memory of her own Jewish family's first Thanksgiving.


Critical Review:


Rahn, Suzanne. "Like a Star Through Flying Snow": Jewish Characters, Visible and Invisible. "The Lion and the Unicorn 27 (2003): 303-23.

Within this article Rahn discusses the evolution of Jewish-American literature. She begins by recalling the idea of Jewish characters in mainstream texts dating back to the 1900's. During the early periods of literature, if characters were featured in a text they were not labeled as Jewish, otherwise Jewish characters were non-existent all together. Rahn goes on to pinpoint specific characters and texts throughout nearly each decade and the correlating societal ideals and conditions of that time period. Rahn also gives concrete text examples to show exactly when certain Jewish concepts and milestones were achieved; for example, Rahn notes that in 1966 Issac Bashevis Singer's Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories was the Newbery Award's first Jewish Honor Book. The timeline ends near present day, and offers the hope of a vivid future for Jewish literature- hope that many authors worked very hard to achieve. The article happily ends noting, "today, Jewish characters are no longer exceptional-- or invisible."

I respect Margaret Cho.

In my opinion the Margaret Cho stand- up comedy we watched in class last week was funny, but not for the reason that she mocked the stereo-types that people assume about her and her racial background- but because I felt she was proving how stupid people can look/sound when they stereotype. The point that really brought this home was when she mocked the television announcer who asked her to tell everyone in her native language that they were switching stations, and she then said that line in English... seriously, I would love to know who that announcer was.

I know I am guilty myself of making assumptions, but watching videos like this (and even relating back to our 'where I'm from poems') really makes me want to do my research and educate myself on topics like race and ethnicity. I would be so embarrassed if I made a comment like that television announcer. I think Cho was sending a positive message to everyone through her comedy: if you are stupid enough to make stereotypes, you're going to look stupid doing it, and someday, somewhere people are going to get a huge laugh out of it.

March 16- People Magazine

What do you think about when you hear People magazine? Celebrities? Fashion? High- Class Gossip? Or maybe you think of real stories, heart-warming tales and triumphs. In the March 16, 2009 there is a article entitled A Chance to Dance written by Sharon Cotliar and Kristen Mascia (pg 108). This short one page article takes a look at a Boston dance class that works with children living with down syndrome.
The most interesting part of the article? The sentence that reads "for many of [the students], basic coordination used to be a challenge, but now they spin and sashay". The first thing that came to mind when I saw this article was 'aww how nice,' but then the TE came out of me thinking- well why is such a inspiring and information article confined to just one page, when John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston have a two page spread debating whether or not they are right for one another? We talked about in class how many different social groups are under-represented in books, does the same under-representation span across all media? I think so.

Thinking about Diversity 'Outside' of Class

There have been a number of things I have been noticing the past couple weeks that directly relate to what we have been talking about in class.

The first of which I actually mentioned about in class last week, a Red Bull Energy Drink commercial that uses the representation of Native Americans to somehow relay the meaning, that "No Red Bull. No Happy Ending." I managed to find a clip of the commercial on the website, Visit4Info- here is the link (I had to put it on to two lines so everyone could view all of it, just copy and paste it into your browser), http://www.visit4info.com/advert/Only-Smoke-Signals-Without-
Red-Bull-Red-Bull-Stimulation/63996


The second representation of Native Americans I found in the State News today, February 17, 2009. It is a cartoon called Bizarro by Dan Piraro, and it shows two Native Americans standing in the front of the picture with a word bubble saying, "Melancholy Wolf must have been rolling in the Prozac flowers," which refers to a third Native American in the background who is skipping in the air. I wasn't able to scan this picture to put into my blog, but I will bring it to class tomorrow and give it to Deb if you want to look at it.

The last encounter I had this week was with a book actually titled Encounter by Jane Yolen which I was assigned to read for my Social Studies class. We were discussing the actuality of Christopher Columbus' travels and his treatment of the Native Americans. This book tells the story of a young Native American boy and his mistrust of the Europeans from the start. While discussing the book, a classmate of mine (Erika) noted that she had previously taken TE448 and wondered about whether or not the book accurately portrayed the Taino tribe. The author does make a note at the end to say that there are many things unknown about the Taino culture, but did her best to most accurately represent the information known.


Just a few things I've been noticing, and thought were worth sharing!

Inside & Outside

Prior to the assigned readings, I had a extremely small knowledge base of the insider/outsider debate. Each article offered an interesting point of view, however I picked out a few quotes that I really felt impacted my opinion of this debate the most:


My first quote comes from Patrick Shannon's article, I Am The Cannon: Finding Ourselves in Multiculturalism.... "Culture, then, is not limited to race because it includes region, gender, language, ethnicity, economic class, and other social markers which can demarcate a social group from others" (2).
-I personally can say that I have categorized multicultural literature as an outlet for different racial groups; with such a naive mindset I can understand why this issue has become so huge, I can only imagine how many other people are mistaking this outlet for something less than it is. Race is different from multiculturalism, and thinking that the two are one in the same means something desperately needs to change people's mindsets, and fast!

In Violet Harris' article, No Invitations Required to Share Multicultural Literature, there were two quotes that immediately drew my attention..." Shannon can decide to join the struggle at his leisure; I cannot. I am a central part of multicultural struggles whether I decide to join or not" (10).
-This statement is so incredibly powerful! I suppose that being a white female, I have often been oblivious to the fact most literature I have ever read I can identify with the character. Rarely do I recall reading books with multicultural issues in my childhood, although I can luckily say that my family did open my eyes to these issues without the use of text. I believe Harris is correct in saying that Shannon can choose whether or not he joins the struggle; but I do support Shannon in the fact that he is joining the struggle willing.

Second, Harris notes that "Donnarae McCann is European-American. She possess the critical consciousness that enabled her to create an excellent examination of the depiction of Native Americans" (11).
-Harris spends most of her article arguing that she is open to the idea of another culture writing about a specific culture, however, I find it odd that she can only find and support one example of this. If she did widely support this belief, wouldn't she have listed more sources to back her claim?

Lastly, I was struck my Mingshui Cai's article, Multiple Definitions of Multicultural Literature: Is the Debate Really Just "Ivory Tower" Bickering? The author notes that, "the view that all literature is multicultural has the merit of expanding our understanding of literature from a multicultural perspective" (316).
-I really just felt this was such a great way to stop categorizing different parts of this debate; if we can search for multicultural aspects in all literature, we will all be more knowledgeable about the world around us.

Where I'm From

I noticed many of my peers posted their poems on their blogs; I know personally I enjoyed listening to the poems in class, so I thought I would post mine as well.


I am from weekends at Grandma's

sleepovers, phone calls, and dollar store trips,

swimming in the summer beside our pink brick.

I am from Barbie's and playing house,

cake for breakfast and pizza for dinner.

I am from hugs and kisses,

unconditional love and support-

Dream big and follow your wishes.

Never being afraid to fall down,

knowing I will always get help back up.

A big brother watches over me,

keeping me out of trouble and sometimes getting me in it.

I am from being their little princess

and getting spoiled rotten,

twenty pairs of shoes and still not finished.

I am from a place where I know I can always return;

A big black dog greets me at the door,

There is nothing I would change-

Nothing I could possibly want more.

Breaking In My Blog

In my TE 401 class last semester we created group blogs, however mine was not all that creative and I dreaded responding each week. My goal for this course is to change my current view of blogs as something that is required, to something that I will enjoy and find helpful. The best part about blogging this semester is that I'm not required to have written a certain number of posts or responses by a designated time slot, and the responses are up to my choosing.

It's been almost a year since I have taken TE348, and sadly I can not specifically remember certain elements about the course, I do recall that I enjoyed the time I spent in it. I can only imagine from the start of TE448 that I will enjoy it just as much (and hopefully be able to remember some things from it!).

I finished reading The Heart of a Chief this afternoon, and although I must admit I was slightly embarrassed pulling it out of my backpack while waiting for my college English class to begin; I actually did not want to put it down during my class discussion of another book! Chris' story was very inspiring- the fact that he was dealing with so much but never gave up hope for what he believed in. It's so easy to get down when things don't seem to be going how you want, and even easier to dwell on it instead of making a change. Even though the novel obviously dealt with more cultural issues, I felt that message of perseverance to be what most effected me.