Jenny Diski’s ‘In Gratitude’
Image by Getty Images
Jenny Diski’s “In Gratitude” resonates as sharply as a slap to the face: Wake up, the book demands. Inspired by the author’s diagnosis of terminal cancer in 2014 (she died in April of this year), it tells a pair of interwoven stories: first, that of Diski’s dying, and then the saga of her teenage years, when she lived for several years as future Nobel laureate Doris Lessing’s quasi-foster child. What do these narratives have in common? Nothing — and everything. The idea is to connect memory and mortality in a mosaic that, like all of Diski’s magnificent nonfiction, coalesces around the ever-shifting question of identity.
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
