“Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage” is Dani Shapiro’s retrospective, deeply meditative account of her 18-year marriage to her husband, whom she simply calls M. Told in poetic fragments, the book shuffles chronology as easily as a deck of cards. It also deftly intersperses entries from the journal Shapiro kept on her honeymoon with quotes from various…
Jane Eisner’s article,”Inner Conflict: The Six Day War’s 50th Anniversary Merit Celebration Or Despair?”, is excellent. I learned the war broke out on Monday, June 5, 1967, when I was sipping an early morning vanilla malted in a newsstand/soda shop across from Columbia University. I tore through the New York Times reading the account (since…
Ivanka Trump’s been coming even more into the harsh glare of the spotlight now that her father is headed to the Oval Office. Her personal brand has taken a hit, and now her 2009 memoir “The Trump Card” is attracting negative attention from The New Yorker. Jia Tolentino writes in the magazine that Trump’s attempt…
“There’s always more to all of us,” Elissa Altman explained to me over the phone when talking about the impetus for her second memoir, “Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw,” which is out next week. Altman — a cookbook editor, food writer and James Beard Foundation award-winning author of the blog Poor Man’s Feast…
“I come from a hot Yiddish mess of a family,” said Judy Batalion at a recent book talk in Boston sponsored by the Jewish Women’s Archive. That family, particularly Batalion’s unnamed mother, is front and center in her pitch perfect memoir, “White Walls: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood and the Mess in Between.” The physical…
Montreal, 1989 “Is everyone ready?” I called from my room.One of my eyes was focused on the mirror as I checked out my creation — an all-white “Working Girl “power suit from Jacob Junior with shoulder pads, a pleated skirt, and a blue and white polka dot shirt that sported a medieval jester’s 6-inch collar,…
We’ve reached a pivotal cultural moment in Holocaust historiography and memoir, poised between the final thoughts of the last survivors and the attempts of their children — and, more recently, their grandchildren — to make sense of their legacy. It’s a phenomenon with an equivalent in Germany, where the so-called Third Generation has been reckoning…
Gloria Steinem wants you to thank people who call you a b**ch. In an , the feminist pioneer — whose memoirs, “My Life on the Road,” come out October 27 — explained that the best way to shut down those types of insults is with simple acknowledgment. “I mean, it totally disarms them,” she said. “They…
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