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Memoirs

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Collection

Eleanor Hatkin Freedman, 1924 - 1974

My mother, I came to realize, wanted to obliterate the barrier between love and sexuality. I was not shocked or shamed to encounter that carnal side of her. The mother I knew during my lifetime was a beautiful and vain woman, one who resisted having a mastectomy for breast cancer because she could not bear to be, as she put it, 'mutilated' and 'disfigured.' Her allure was part of her life-force, something inextricably tied to her passions for intellectual growth and artistic expression.

Madeleine Stern, 1912 - 2007

…an innovative and revered entrepreneur in the leather-armchair world of gentlemen antiquarian book dealers; unmarried in a world where women were wives, Stern lived in a universe in which it was not possible to live the way she wanted to. She simply ignored that impossibility, created her own universe and, in a small but exquisite way, changed the world.

The words of Iranian Jewish American Women

Leora Jackson

After a long hiatus filled with applications for scholarships and preparation for standardized tests, I have recently returned to my primary duty as a graduate student: graduating – that is, fulfilling the requirements necessary to graduate. In this case, that means writing my MA thesis, which is an examination of memoirs and personal essays by Iranian Jewish women who are living in the United States. It’s an interesting project, if occasionally overwhelming, and it reminds me every day that my own experience of Jewish life is not consistent with the lives of Jews everywhere.

Topics: Immigration, Memoirs
"The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee," by Sarah Silverman

The "real" Sarah Silverman

Leah Berkenwald

Last Friday I went to a sold-out book reading in Coolidge Corner. Sarah Silverman, probably the most (in)famous Jewish woman comedian today, was reading from her new memoir, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee. Since she is without a doubt a "Jewess with attitude," I thought it was important that I be there.

Topics: Comedy, Memoirs

Death of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp, widow of Wyatt

December 19, 1944

Josephine Sarah Marcus, born to German Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, NY, in 1861, grew up in San Francisco.

Dramatization of Anne Frank's diary broadcast on the radio

December 14, 1952

Soon after the 1952 publication of the English translation of Anne Frank's war-time diary of her family's hidden life in Nazi-controlled New Amsterdam

The Klezmatics' performance of Aliza Greenblatt's work, set to music by Woody Guthrie

December 20, 2003

Jewish contributions to American music have long been recognized, with the list of well-known songwriters featuring Broadway composers and lyricists like Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein, and Steph

Birth of "writer's writer" Hortense Calisher

December 20, 1911

The daughter of a Southern Jewish perfume-maker and a German immigrant, author Hortense Calisher was born on December 20, 1911 in New York City

Barbara Walters becomes highest-paid journalist

October 4, 1976

On October 4, 1976, Barbara Walters became the first woman co-anchor of a major network evening news program.

Birth of entertainer Kitty Carlisle Hart

September 3, 1910

Born on September 3, 1910 [some sources say 1911, 1914], Kitty Carlisle Hart began a musical career at a young age and kept performing into her nineties.

Birth of Confederate nurse Phoebe Yates Levy Pember

August 18, 1823

Phoebe Yates Levy Pember was born into an assimilated Charleston, South Carolina, family on August 18, 1823.

"Life on the Fringes" explores Orthodox feminism

July 1, 2000

Haviva Ner-David's book, Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination, was published on July 1, 2000.

Birth of feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin

June 9, 1939

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, who has become one of the most well-known figures in both the Jewish and secular feminist movements, was born on Jun

Gertrude Stein publishes Alice B. Toklas "Autobiography"

June 1, 1933

American modernist writer Gertrude Stein published a memoir, ironically titled The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, on June 1, 1933.

Death of comedian Gilda Radner at 42

May 20, 1989

Gilda Radner's death from ovarian cancer on May 20, 1989 at age 42 cut short a vital life and comedic career.

Poet Maxine Kumin wins Pulitzer Prize

May 7, 1973
Writer Maxine Kumin won the esteemed award for poetry for her collection "Up Country: Poems of New England."

Review of Mary Antin's "The Promised Land" Appears in the "New York Times"

April 14, 1912

Only 30 years old when she published her autobiography, The Promised Land, Mary Antin captured the dreams and experiences of turn-of-the-cent

Publication of Merle Feld's "A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey"

April 1, 1999

Merle Feld's memoir, A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey was published on April 1, 1999.

Anzia Yezierska

Essayist, novelist, writer, and literary critic Anzia Yezierska turned the frustrations and indignities she suffered in New York’s tenements into novels and short stories that depicted the strenuous working lives of Jewish immigrants. Her novels, short stories, and autobiographical writing vividly depict both the literal hunger of poverty and the metaphoric hunger for security, education, companionship, home, and meaning that Jewish immigrants sought in America at the turn of the century.

Jean Starr Untermeyer

Poet Jean Starr Untermeyer’s work was first influenced by her connections with writers Sara Teasdale, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, and Robert Frost. Through her many volumes of published poetry and translations, Untermeyer explored her own personal tragedies and defended women’s right to use personal experience in their art.

Sophie Tucker

Vaudeville legend and Broadway star Sophie Tucker defied convention with her saucy comic banter and music. Tucker became famous internationally for her singing performances and delighted audiences throughout America and Europe with her rendition of “My Yiddishe Momme.” Tucker was proud of her Jewish identity and created the Sophie Tucker Foundation, which supported various actors’ guilds, hospitals, synagogues, and Israeli youth villages.

Alice Babette Toklas

Alice Babette Toklas, cookbook author and memoirist, along with her companion Gertrude Stein, served as host to one of the liveliest literary and artistic salons in Paris, from 1907 until Stein’s death in 1946. In the last decades of her life, Toklas was sought after for her many stories about her famous friends and acquaintances—and enemies—including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Thornton Wilder, and scores of other writers, artists, and musicians.

Marie Syrkin

Marie Syrkin is best known as a polemicist for the State of Israel, whose keen arguments appeared in a wide range of publications for a period of almost seventy years. Her life touched almost every significant aspect of Jewish life in America and Europe in the twentieth century.

Rose Pastor Stokes

Rose Pastor Stokes was called the “Cinderella of the sweatshops” when, as a young reporter, she met and married millionaire James Graham Phelps Stokes. Stokes became increasingly radical, adopting antiwar and pro-abortion stands, becoming a union organizer, and joining the Communist Party.

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American modernist writer, an international celebrity, and an artistic iconoclast. With her companion Alice B. Toklas, she lived in Paris for most of her life. An impressive modern art collection hung on the walls of their home. Besides poetry and plays, Stein wrote innovative fiction, essays on writing and art, and two memoirs, The Biography of Alice B. Toklas and Everybody’s Autobiography, that chronicled her life, career, and famous friends.

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