(I thought there was going to be a question to being discussion here, but I see none. So, I'll just start...) The video posted here says Diamant wrote this book about the Rockport Lodge and how that expanded Addie Baum's view of the world and friendships for life. But I am wondering if it was written with some sort of social studies curriculum in mind: The book touches on major historical points -- immigration challenges and assimilation, health issues and shell-shock, oppression of women and labor issues, German versus other Ashkenazi Jewish observances, and white/Jewish flight from cities -- without presenting anything too challenging. In fact, it strikes me as very like an "American Girl" story for slightly older readers, i.e., really just mean to illustrate a time period, not to tell a particularly character-focused story.
The most interesting thing to me was Addie's discovering the anti-child-labor movement when she meets her soon-to-be-husband and how problematic that must have been for someone whose family survival depended on funds from the garment industry. Prior to that we hear very little about conditions and struggles in the factory, especially as Addie and her sister work in offices. But this is tossed off, as "yeah, I thought about my brother-in-law's company," but it's not posed as any kind of conflict in the family: Wasn't Levine upset to have a brother-in-law who was threatening his livelihood and the industry? There must have been some tension there, but it's not explored in the interview with the granddaughter. So, if Anita Diamant is to respond: I'd really like to know about this choice to glide right by what I'm guessing would have been at least as worthy of comment as the issue about which shul to join?
Perhaps because we only have what Addie told her granddaughter, we get only the most obvious (and understandable) anger: lack of recognition for women in the early part of the 20th Century, struggles in the newsroom, racial policies that kept some stories only in the Nation. What would the story have been like, had she been speaking to a peer? to someone in the labor movement? to a young organizer?
(I thought there was going to be a question to being discussion here, but I see none. So, I'll just start...) The video posted here says Diamant wrote this book about the Rockport Lodge and how that expanded Addie Baum's view of the world and friendships for life. But I am wondering if it was written with some sort of social studies curriculum in mind: The book touches on major historical points -- immigration challenges and assimilation, health issues and shell-shock, oppression of women and labor issues, German versus other Ashkenazi Jewish observances, and white/Jewish flight from cities -- without presenting anything too challenging. In fact, it strikes me as very like an "American Girl" story for slightly older readers, i.e., really just mean to illustrate a time period, not to tell a particularly character-focused story.
The most interesting thing to me was Addie's discovering the anti-child-labor movement when she meets her soon-to-be-husband and how problematic that must have been for someone whose family survival depended on funds from the garment industry. Prior to that we hear very little about conditions and struggles in the factory, especially as Addie and her sister work in offices. But this is tossed off, as "yeah, I thought about my brother-in-law's company," but it's not posed as any kind of conflict in the family: Wasn't Levine upset to have a brother-in-law who was threatening his livelihood and the industry? There must have been some tension there, but it's not explored in the interview with the granddaughter. So, if Anita Diamant is to respond: I'd really like to know about this choice to glide right by what I'm guessing would have been at least as worthy of comment as the issue about which shul to join?
Perhaps because we only have what Addie told her granddaughter, we get only the most obvious (and understandable) anger: lack of recognition for women in the early part of the 20th Century, struggles in the newsroom, racial policies that kept some stories only in the Nation. What would the story have been like, had she been speaking to a peer? to someone in the labor movement? to a young organizer?