The Brothers Ashkenazi by I. J. Singer - published in Yiddish, 1937, translated by Joseph Singer, 1980

The Brothers Ashkenazi by Israel  Joshua Singer -1937 - translated 1980 by Joseph Singer, the author’s son.

1893 Bitgoraj, Poland

1919 to 1921 resides in Soviet Union

1936 - Moves to New York City

1937 - publishes in Yiddish The Brothers Ashkenazi, translated that same year into English, it was on The New York Times Best Seller list along with Gone With the Wind.

1944 - New York City

A few days ago I began to wonder why there are no books written in Yiddish on any “greatest novels” lists I have seen. For sure The Brothers Ashkenazi belongs on such a list as does The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl by Sholem Aleichem. The most likely reason is that none of The many list makers have ever read not just these works but any Yiddish literature at all. There were never taught at the schools the list makers attended.  Some of this must be attributed to simple prejudice, some to a Western European bias (I don’t  recall ever seeing a Japanese or Indian novel on a list either).  To this, maybe I will return to this topic later in the year) all i can say more is the pity.

Singer vividly captures ebb and flow of life in Poland’s second city, Lódz, focusing on Jewish Society as seen by events in the lives of two brothers.

We see the city go through numerous transformations, from sort of a giant shtetl where everyone knows each others business and tradition decides fates to a dynamic western industrial and trade powerhouse.  Singer does just a wonderful job showing on Lódz  were impacted by huge spocial transformations brought on my the Russian Revolution.  In a brilliant comic interlude we see how people gradually develop the courage to mock the Czar.  We see World War One sent many residents into Army never to return while others became rich from the war.  

There just is so much in this novel, there are terrible pograms, workers strikes, 

Police repression.  At one point The Cossacks are brought in by White Russian forces to bring order.

One of the brothers has a compulsion  to grow rich through his huge garment factory.  The factory, with thousands of workers, is a snake pit of corruption.  Everybody steals what they can.  I was a bit shocked to learn factory manager kept the owner supplied with rather young girls.  There is much more in this fascinating book.

Irving Howe, a recognized authority on Yiddish society and literature is of great help:

“Singer is dealing here with one of the great themes of the nineteenth-century European novel, a theme especially exciting to Yiddish readers of, say, forty or fifty years ago—the rise of capitalism in its “heroic” or adventuresome phase and the accompanying entry of the Jews onto the stage of historical action, whether through the accumulation of capital which obsesses Max Ashkenazi or through the gathering of rebto leave a mark move along parallel lines. From a traditional Jewish point of view, both styles of conduct must seem equally disturbing and ominous.ellion which forms the goal of his socialist antagonists. If the objectives of these two contending forces are at polar opposites, Singer brilliantly shows how their outpourings of energy, their hungers to to leave a mark move along parallel lines. From a traditional Jewish point of view, both styles of conduct must seem equally disturbing and omnimous”.

ISRAEL JOSHUA SINGER, the older brother of Nobel Prize–winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, was born in 1893 in Bilgoraji, Poland, the second of four children of a rabbi. At the age of two, he moved with his family to Leoncin, the scene of his memoir, Of a World That Is No More. In 1916 he contributed to Yiddish newspapers in Warsaw and then in Kiev, and in the latter city his short story “Pearls” was published, which brought him immediate recognition. In 1921 I. J. Singer was hired as a correspondent for the Jewish Daily Forward. This association lasted until the author’s death, and his articles were compiled in 

the book, New Russia. In 1927 he wrote his first novel, Steel and Iron, which was followed, five years later, by Yoshe Kalb. I. J. Singer came to the United States in 1934. He died in New York on February 10, 1944.

This is the only one of his novels in print as a Kindle.

Mel u

Ambrosia Bousweau

"Leave, Gentle Magic" - A Short Story by Neera Kashyap - Spring, 2018 - Paper Cuts Magazine

Paper Cuts Magazine - Spring, 2018 from The Desi Writers' Lounge

"Leave, Gentle Spirit" by Neera Kashyap is a fascinating story narrated by an American ethnographer living in a small village in the Himalayas. Her mission there is to develop an in-depth understanding of the culture, folkways, religious beliefs and customs of women in the village, she learned to speak Hindi, widely spoken in the area.  As much as possible she lives like the women she is researching..

(Ethnographic research is an approach that looks at: people in their cultural setting; ... their language, and the symbols, rituals and shared meanings that populate their world, with the object of producing a narrative account of that particular culture, against a theoretical backdrop.)

We can see how she preceives her mission:

"Like many ethnographers, I had learnt to live like the women I researched, becoming a part of their lives and their seasons. A year and a half and I could walk long distances like them, use the sickle and carry headloads of grass like the younger girls, even a bucket of water on my head without getting splashed. I learnt to dress like them, to cook the way they did, and to joke in between chores. Early on, I felt it was my white skin that kept me from belonging, but then I saw it was my reserve. I had been ready to leave in three months, at first, but not anymore after I began to relax. Now my life in the US felt more like a chimera. And this despite the fact that there was no heating, no running water, no TV, no reliable electricity, no entertainment, and food utterly different from what I was used to."

Ethnographers are not aloof observers studying their subjects from a blind.  Ellen lives among the women she was researching.  Slowly the women begin to make observation on Ellen.  They wonder why she wears no gold. I loved this segment:

"Just as I would observe and record my target group — women — I had to submit to being observed and recorded as well. It was from our landlady Mansa Devi’s verandah upstairs that most of the laughter resonated. Sometimes, I was made to sit on a low stool so my hair could be massaged with mustard oil as it had been pronounced “too dry.” There was genuine astonishment that I wore no gold. One evening, some of the women put their own ornaments on me — necklaces of varying length, dangling earrings, bracelets, armlets, toe-rings, revealing my “beauty” to me in a cracked discoloured mirror.

Mansa Devi was struck by a thunderous thought. “But why are you not married still? Is there no one to arrange a match for you?” she asked.

“Maybe she is not marriageable,” Panna slyly suggested. Neema flew at her for her rudeness and tried to calm my ‘ruffled feathers’, but Mansa Devi came up with a solution: “Maybe we should find you a match. Not like us. Someone like you who is always writing, writing, writing… also who can talk like you in English… chutter putter chutter putter… there are men like that in our bigger towns… we will see.”

Kashyap elegantly individuates the personalities of the women.  The region has few economic opportunities so most of the husbands are working in big cities or in the army, coming home maybe for two weeks of the year.  The women run the households, take care of a few animals and usually a small plot of ground.

As the women begin to become comfortable with Ellen, she is able to learn more about their culture.  Here is a beautiful story about a song:

"“It’s a nyoli — a forest song,” she finally offered. “A sad song, like when you miss somebody, no? Ghughuteeis a sort of bird. She sits on the branch of a mango tree. The singer feels sad when the ghughuteesings because the singing reminds her of her husband. He is in the army and posted far away in snowy Ladakh. There is war and she worries. It is the season of chait — you know chait? Spring! She misses him more because it is spring and everything looks beautiful. She wishes she had the ghughutee’swings to fly to him, to look at his face to her heart’s content. She knows she can’t… so she tells the ghughutee to do her a favor… to fly to her husband and tell him all that she feels for him.”

The women are all going tommorow to a religious ritual designed to drive what we can call evil spirits from a woman.  They tell Ellen she may attend as long as she is not mensursting, if so she would poison the ritual.

There is a long account of the jagar:

"The story behind this jagar had done the rounds, so I was familiar with it. In Mansa Devi’s natal village in the valley below, an eighteen-year-old girl, Phula, had been possessed by the spirit of an old female relative who had died even before Phula was born. For two months, Phula acted increasingly crazy. While working in the fields, she would take off into the forest and disappear for hours together, only to return home looking wild, with no memory of the events of the day. She had eating disorders and often felt that an old woman was reaching for her. When she began to babble incoherently, her mother forced Phula to articulate what she could about what was going on with her.

Phula said it was an old woman, related to them through marriage, who’d possessed her. This woman had two daughters and no son. The daughters had married and moved away. The old woman had died both a widow and alone and had been unhappy at death. By the time one of her daughters could reach the village, the deceased woman’s house and land had been appropriated by her husband’s male relatives — Phula’s ancestors. The ghost wanted justice for her daughters who were still alive. Until then, she would stay in possession of Phula’s body and mind."

As the story closes Ellen is back in her apartment in the city, speaking with

a founder of an NGO devoted to helping the women Ellen studied:

"I stared at my desk – a flurry of papers, clothbound notebooks, writing pads, and stacks of red spiral notebooks. I read and re-read my session with Kamla Behnwhose name was underlined in my notebook in red: founder of NGO Sahaj, activist for livelihoods and health rights, my guide and mentor. At first, I had spent months with her and her staff, trying to understand the issues that affected the women.

Kamla Behnhad dismissed ghost-possession as superstition, not to be encouraged. She reeled off statistics on how this increased mortality rates especially in villages, as people simply would not take the sick to scientifically trained doctors or hospitals without the express permission of the family priest. Their spirit possession theory is not limited to cases of mental illness but extends to physical illness as well, she had said, her face warm with passion."

As I read this I thought of my wife's stories of native faith healers in very rural Zambales able to cure illnesses highly educated physicians could not.  I know mapped over western science and Catholicism is something much older which gives strength.  To discount it is a mistake I don't make.

"Leave, Gentle Spirit" is a wonderful work, deeply informed and wise.  It deals with cultural divisions and gives us a look at life within the Himilayan region. 

Neera Kashyap has worked as a newspaper journalist, as researcher and editor on environment and health, and as social and health communications specialist. She has published a book for young adults with Rupa & Co. titled Daring to Dream, 2003. Her stories for children have been included in five prize-winning anthologies published by Children’s Book Trust. As a literary writer of creative essays, poems and short fiction, her work has appeared in various online and print literary journals including Out of Print journal & Blog, Earthen Lamp Journal, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Muse India, Reading Hour and are forthcoming in Indian Literature and Papercuts. She lives in Delhi.

Next month we plan to post upon another of her short stories, "Quiet as a Feather", from India Review, 2018.  The link is below

https://indianreview.in/fiction/as-quiet-as-a-feather-falling-neera-kashyap/

We hope to feature Neera Kashyap many more times.

Oleander Bouswesu

Mel u

The Shadow of Hermaphroditus - A Short Story by Badriya al-Badri -May 1, 2019 - translated from Arabic by Ghayde Ghraowi

You may read today’s story on The May 2019 Issue of Words Without Borders, focusing on Omani literature

“The Shadow of Hermaphroditus” by Badriya al-Badri is my first venture into Omani literature.  It is told from the point of view of a young person, Saud, appearing to be a woman but who  self-indenfies as male. All of her life her parents have tried to bring out her feminine side.  

The story is set in contemporary Oman.  There are two wars being fought, one is the war of terrorists against the government of Oman.  The other is that of 

Saud with her self:

"No one is able to fathom that the issue is nothing more than a congenital defect, in which I had no hand. All my mother and father’s efforts focused on physical treatments. They searched for the hidden femininity within my small body. Then they had to search for a psychological treatment for what I was suffering—that, or discover my true, concealed body from behind that of a girl. Had they done so, I wouldn’t find myself engaged in a horrific war in which I am the sole combatant—the victor and the vanquished. In reality, I’m always the losing side. I've never felt the pleasure of defeating myself even for a day. My body vanquishes me, tramples me, leaves me lifeless. I consider fleeing from it, replacing it, transforming it, subduing it."

Saud wants a wife but she fears no woman will accept her.  She tells herself she could buy a woman from war torn Yemen who would accept an way of escaping the violence of her homeland.  Still she thinks does she want a mate so desperate that she will accept any way out.  She fears no one will ever accept her.

"Maybe Yemen would be a better choice than India. She’d be an Arab woman, like me, which is already enough. We’d have no difficulty understanding each other. She isn’t likely to be demanding, the war having devastated her. She might well accept any trace of a man to escape a war that has snatched her family from her in the blink of an eye. A shadow of a man is safer than a shadow of a battered wall that may collapse and crush her at any moment. A semblance of a man is better than a bomb that explodes by surprise, blowing her to scattered pieces that can’t be put back together. It’s no matter that we exploit people’s needs to satisfy our own demands. When all is said and done, I’m just one more who doesn’t hesitate to do what he wants, following his own desires. There’s always a perpetrator and there’s always a victim. "

At midpoint we are introduced to Olivia who seems to have some sort of relationship with Saud but may not know her secret."

A terrible incident happens at the close of the story.

Bedriy al-Badri has a deep feel for how wars of terror can impact poor women.

The plotting could perhaps be a triffle better but I for sure recommend reading this story.

If you are interested in reading brand new works of short fiction in translation from lots of places, Words Without Borders is a great source.

Badriyya al-Badri is an Omani poet and novelist. She composes poetry in Classical and colloquial Arabic. She has participated in many local and regional Gulf events and competitions. Her published works include: What’s Behind Loss (2015), The Last Crossing (2017), and The Shadow of Hermaphroditus. She has two poetry collections: Narrow Valley (2018) and Closer to the Waving of a Poem (2019)..  from Words Without Borders

Ol

With a Capital T - A Short Story by Mavis Gallant - first published in Canadian Fiction Magazine -1977

Buried in Print's Mavis Gallant Project

Mavis Gallant on The Reading Life

Gallant dedicated "With a Capital T" to Madeline and Jean-Paul Lemieux.  Jean -Paul (1904 to 1990) is a renown Canadian artist, focusing largely on the Quebec area.  They were married in 1937. (I did not find in my short research a personal connection with Gallant, if you have information on this please share.)

April 11, 1922 - Montreal

1950 - moves to Paris

September 1, 1951- publishes, in The New Yorker, her first short story.  She would go onto publish 116 stories in The New Yorker. ( I greatly enjoy looking at the covers of the issue in which a story was published.)

February 18, 2014 - passes away in her beloved Paris

"With a Capital T" is the last of six linked stories (all included in Home Truths) focusing on Linnet Muir, born in Montreal.  When we first met her she was 18, moving back from New York City to Montreal.  She is self supporting with few family ties and her only social contacts seem to be older men she works with.  World War Two is on and most of the young men are in the service.

In the final story she is twenty-one, working as journalist and is married to a Canadian Soldier serving in Europe.  There is no suggestion Linnet misses her husband, loves him or even really worries about him.  We learn little about him,,not even his first name. I did sense Linnet feels being married makes her a more to be taken seriously woman.  

Her main job seems to be to write captions for pictures.  Linnet has some fun with this. The managers at the paper are all men, they are depicted as quarrelling over who is in charge. Linnet is told never to criticize the government, after all their is a War on! Her politics are classic left wing.

"Churches and schools, banks and prisons, dwellings and railway stations were part of an imperial convallation that wound round the globe, designed to impress on the minds of indigenous populations that the builders had come to stay."

In an interesting interlude Linnet is sent to interview her own grandmother, who fears she is there looking for money.  We learn a little about Linnet's father, who died long ago.

The next two Gallant stories I will post upon are "Overhead in a Balloon" and "Luc and his Father".  The project is scheduled to end in September 2000.  

The Reading Life Review - April 2019 - New and Ongoing Projects

April Authors

Column 1

1. Chaya Bhuvaneswar - USA - White Elephants Dancing - marvelous debut collection of short stories
2. Shauna Gilligan - Ireland - Author Happiness Comes from Nowhere, featured 14 times
3. Balli Kaur Jaswal - Singapore - Author Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows
4. Michael David Lukas - USA - Author The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

Column 2

1. Eric Vullard - France - Author Versailles
2. Helen Wecker - USA - Author The Golem and the Jinni
3. David Mitchell - Uk - Cold Atlas and six other novels
4. Mona Dash - India - UK - great short stories, Goan historian

Column 3

1. Chava Rosenberg - Poland - Canada - Yiddish language writer,multi genre master
2. Orla McAlinden - Ireland - author of The Flight of the Wren and The Accidental Wife
3. Mavis Gallant - Canada - France
4. Debra Caplan - USA - writes on the Yiddish Theater

Column 4

1. Janet H Swinney - UK - wonderful short stories, frequently featured on The Reading Life
2. Damayanti Biswas - Singapore - a very talented multi genre writer
3. Hasntika Sirisena - USA - short stories set in Sri Lanka-\
4. Jacob Dinezon  Poland Yiddish canon status writer

Birth Countries of April Authors

1. USA - 5
2. UK - 3
3. Singapore - 2
4. Ireland 2
5. Poland 2
6. France 1
7. Canada 1

In April 14 women were featured, 4 men, 13 living writers, 4 deceased.

8 writers were featured for the first time, 8 are returning.  

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Projects

I like reading projects, small ones like The Novels of David Mitchell (5 of 7) bigger ones like Honore de Balzac’s Comedie Humaine (81 of 91) and huge ones like Japanese Novels and Irish Literature, 

 projects expand into cultural snd historical readings.  

One of my most rewarding projects, Yiddish Literature, began when Yale University Press, in April 2012, gave me the ten volume Yale Yiddish Library Collection.  Yiddish Literature began around 1870 and ended around 2005 when the last writers passed.  Yiddish is a literature of transition, emigration, the struggle to survive.  All the writers were multilingual.  The Holocaust changed everything.  There may be no more Yiddish literature being written but there is a constant flow of new translations.  

For a long time now I have been posting on literary works from the Indian Subcontinent.  I started last month a new permanent project, Short Stories by South Asian Women.  I include in this anyone who self identifies as South Asia, no matter where they live or may have been born.  I am seeking suggestions in this area.  

I will continue following on with The Mavis Gallant Short Story Project of Buried in Print.  Gallant published some 200 stories.  I have access to about half of them. All are very welcome to join in, read many stories or just one.

http://www.buriedinprint.com/

We are always looking for new to me writers.

I give me great thanks to Oleander Bousweau and Ambrosia Bousweau

Mel u