A short biographical corrective regarding the Jewish- American folk hero, and some previously unpublished correspondence, both disappointingly slight. In the first third of this volume, Ohio-based critic Young attempts to revise the myth of Emma Lazarus (18491887), who penned ``The New Colossus'' in celebration of the Statue of Liberty. The author claims that Lazarus was not introverted and somber, as her sister Josephine described her soon after her death, but in fact a vibrant and social woman. Young successfully discredits some of Lazarus's previous biographers, including the one who in 1938 wrote that while passing the Statue of Liberty during her final illness Lazarus was ``too weak'' to notice the plaque on which her poem was inscribed—the plaque was not placed there until 1903, 16 years after the poet's death. The author is also convincing when she portrays Lazarus as a conflicted personality: a defender of the Jews who derided European Jewry; a 19th-century woman who insisted, ``I am not & improbable as it sounds, I don't want to be [engaged].'' The text, however, does not satisfactorily address these conflicts, and Young's interpretations of Lazarus's work are plodding. Lazarus's letters, which comprise the bulk of the book, are more interesting, though they too raise more questions than they answer. Correspondents include Helena deKay Gilder, wife of Century editor Richard Watson Gilder; Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop; E.R.A. Seligman, son of the prominent Jewish banker Joseph Seligman; and Henry James. Unfortunately, all the correspondence is one-sided (from Lazarus to her friends, except in the case of James), which makes it difficult to gauge the relationships in full. Instructive, but by no means the final word on the subject.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8276-0516-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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