#jewish lit

[soracities]

Edmond Jabès from "Drawn Curtains" (Return to the Book), excerpted in From the Book to the Book: An Edmond Jabès Reader [transcript in ALT]

[read-alert]

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month! Full titles under the cut!

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Just Shy of Ordinary by AJ Sass

Teacher of the Year by MA Wardell

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

Ring of Solomon by Adrian Polydoros

Two Tribes by Emily Bowen Cohen

Their Troublesome Crush by Xan West

How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

"In the Penal Colony" is available to read here

*Originally published in German under the title "In der Strafkolonie", sometimes translated as "In the Penal Settlement"

[iliothermia]

Havdalah candle merman..

[syeniites]

I know it’s not sci-fi but I would also like to add this bit from Jonathan Rabb’s Among the Living to the Venn diagram

So tea is to Imperial Radch what sitting down is to Murderbot

[jewish-culture-is]

guys I'm back at it again with the graphic eyeliner....

[image ID: a close up on a brown eye with light purple eyeshadow, blue eyeliner, and 6 little candles painted on the end of the wing. end ID]

[image ID: a menorah with a city skyline painted on it standing with six candles: a blue shamas candle, and then red, yellow, green, yellow, red, in order. end ID]

[the-lesser-light]

To the convert:

Perhaps this is your first time experiencing the holidays away from how you were raised.

You watch for the first time as the family gets excited about Christmas.

It was easy for you to go out away from the friends and family and celebrate your new Holidays with your new chosen tribe. But is it easy to come home where you are expected to celebrate as a Christian with the family?

For some, it is easy to be a multi religious family. You can separate the joy and fun from the religious aspects. For others, it feels like you are being held hostage as you decorate a tree and watch movies about the true spirit of Christmas.

Still, there are others trapped in tradition. You expect the Christmas dinner, the lights, the tree, the movies, the music. Perhaps it is nostalgia or perhaps you don't know how to let go of how you were raised. Maybe you don't want to let go of that feeling or maybe you feel guilty for whistling along to Silent Night.

There may be fights. There may be families that force you to go to Church on Christmas because it's "A family tradition". There may be uncomfortable situations. There may be mixed emotions and pain.

It will be okay.

For those who have converted, are in the process of converting, or are thinking about converting: It will be okay.

There will be light.

Even if you can't light them at home because you can't or haven't had that discussion with your family, there will be light for you.

This is a resilient tribe that knows above all else how to bring light to the dark. There will be a light for you.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

The only reason I'm noticing that the days are getting shorter is because the candle-lighting times are now so soon 😭

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Any other Jews think this ad is like pretty offensive? Like, that is the holiest name of god. If that particular Hebrew name of god is written in a book, that book has to be buried in a special cemetery. We don't even say it out loud. So maybe don't put it on a t-shirt?

Do you really wanna risk spilling turmeric latte on the name of God? Is it really OK to throw the tetragrammaton into the wash with your dirty undies?

Yeah, I'm not OK with this.

[jetwhenitsmidnight]

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

Release date: 1 October 2024

Genre: adult literary thriller/horror

Synopsis

The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.

As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a "natural" death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?

Review

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!

This book is awful.

Don't get me wrong, this is a brilliant novel, but I found the reading experience to be really difficult. Not that I struggled to keep reading; I couldn't put it down. This book took a toll on me mentally as it went to some pretty dark places, some of which I did not see coming.

The writing is in the typical sort of litfic style, which I am usually not a fan of, but it really works to cultivate the overall mood/atmosphere of the book. The prose flows well, and strikes a fine balance between being complex but still readable.

The author uses the haunted house novel as a vehicle to explore themes of white supremacy, generational trauma, and cisheteronormativity. I am not smart enough to get everything, but the author does an excellent job of conveying the themes in the narrative.

There are time jumps, switching between the present day and scenes from Ezri's childhood, as well as dialogue without quotation marks, which were disorienting to read, but served the narrative well, as it conveyed their current mindset.

I really resonated with Ezri's relationship with their mother, as well as the themes of generational trauma; while my relationship to my mother is much better than their's, there were certain moments between them that I found quite relatable.

I read some reviews that didn't like the plot, or the ending; while there is definitely a large tonal shift at the end, due to the plot, I think that it makes sense thematically.

Overall, a book that is definitely going to be staying with me for some time.

Content warnings

I'm including the content warnings at the bottom of this review, as it contains spoilers; however, if you struggle with dark themes and difficult subject matter, I would advice that you check the content warnings before reading this book.

Keep in mind that I may have missed out certain warnings.

Death, suicide

Child abuse, emotional abuse

Homophobia, transphobia, slurs

Child sexual assault, grooming

Explicit sexual content

Animal death

Mental illness, depression, dissociation, suicidal thoughts

Chronic illness

Threat of gun violence

Racism, classism

Vomit

Disordered eating

Gaslighting

[fishfingersandscarves]

last night!

[likesmens]

Tfw you were just in the middle of a whole legitimate discussion with someone pro-Palestine in the replies of their post but then without warning they blocked you and hid all your replies because they didn't like what you had to say

[read-alert]

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month! Here's some of my favorite reads by Jewish Authors from the past year

Full titles under the cut

When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb

Ellen Outside the Lines by AJ Sass

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

A Shot in the Dark by Victoria Lee

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé

Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

The Ghosts of Rose Hill by RM Romero

[androgynealienfemme]

When we wake up together in Brooklyn, we are three thousand miles away from our daily lives on the West Coast, and I already know that I am in love with her. We have slept facing East, and sunrise, Jerusalem, farther; the morning light streams in through thin curtains, and when I open my eyes I can see her smiling at me. We have grown close to one another, and then closer; I look at this smile of hers, and I think that maybe she has started to see her future in me. That night we celebrate Shabbat with her family, and then we return to bed, to celebrate with each other.

This is a simple jewish story and a simple love story. A nice Jewish boy meets a nice Jewish girl in the woods, and they start what seems to be a summer camp romance, only it holds, and through the campfire flirtation, they become an us. But the story here is also between two queers, and this infuses each layer: My butch self ot her femme self, my tattoos against her bare skin, the glasses that we each have to take off when we kiss, my white T-shirt against her black slip, and my palms, pressed into hers, fingers entwined; all of the ways that love has threaded itself between us, the most simple and complex revelations.

Before we know each other well, and before we tell each other our stories, and before I am hers, and she is mine, there is the beginning, and in the beginning I walk across the room to talk to her. She is on one side, and I am on the other, and I am immediately drawn to her, compelled. And then there is also the act of standing near her: there is this deep flash of recognition between us, this low hum just below the surface. There is this feeling of familiarity, and ease underneath all the words that we are saying, and all the words that we are not saying -- and this feeling between us is like speaking a second language, like speaking the language of our homeland, uncovered. Right from the start, this standing near her, it leaves me wanting more. "

"What We Know To Be True", Sasha T. Goldberg, On Butch and Femme: Compiled Readings, (edited by I.M. Epstein) (2017)

[musings-of-a-lit-student]

Between The Lines

When you read literature you get to see the work of someone else, and interpret it. Our experiences shape our understanding of people relationships. The same way we note the information from newspapers, facts like those influence how we read other forms of media like reels, or videos.

Acknowledging the importance of absorbing information we come in contact with and the way it influences what we read in the future plays a big part in how we see the world. Maus is perhaps my favourite books simply for way Spiegelman encourages us to question what's going on at each point of the work.

The media we consume is important because be it the news or stories, we note that someone has an intent behind the things they say. Just as Vladek presents himself as more preferable in his retelling, we see Spiegelman discredit himself in order to sate his guilt. Maus is the perfect example of why things are shown the way they are, and it encourages us to question the motives of the writers.

When you read a news article, the writers may want to influence you in thinking poorly about one country, or candidate, or procedure. Even in this day and age, propaganda can be widespread, and it was often used in the wars to boost morale, sharing selective information about victories and less information about defeats.

Remembering that all the media you consume has a secondary purpose is important. Be it Tiktok- where people want to monetise their views, or movies where certain thoughts are propositioned. In analysing this book, I don't just hope to point out cool facts, and techniques used, but rather encourage you to consider the motivations for authorial choices in a narrative.

Crash Course Series

[harringtonandbuckley]

Just thought of Nancy and Robin decorating a christmas tree and Nancy is obviously too short to reach the top, so Robin offers to put the star on, but Nancy denies the offer and instead tries to jump and put the star on but she trips and knocks the entire tree over.

bonus: robin literally just standing there laughing and doing the “womp womp womp womp” sad trombone sound (which actually doesn’t make nancy mad just makes her giggle bc they love each other your honour). then robin proceeds to help nancy up and sway her around the room while singing ‘free fallin’