Tahneer Oksman
Why Only Jewish Boys Get To Keep Their Noses
Once Jewish women’s bodies may have been relentlessly caricatured in pop culture. Now, author Tahneer Oksman, explains how a new generation of graphic novelists, have reclaimed those caricatures.
Friday Film: Sholem Aleichem’s ‘Bushels and Baskets of Stories’
Courtesy of Riverside Films
Of Women, Comics, and Reclaiming Jewish Stereotypes
While various critics have noted the strong influence that Jews have had on the creation of American comics, few have fully explored the role of Jewish women. Yet Jewish women have often been at the forefront of creative explorations in the graphic narrative form. And in many of their comics, Jewish identity is a fertile site of exploration of the unstable, contradictory, and ambiguous figurations of the self in a postmodern world.
Friday Film: Amos Oz on Not Writing Universally
Courtesy of Yonathan & Masha Films
Friday Film: Stalking Grace
In a 2007 obituary for Grace Paley published in the New York Times, Margalit Fox wrote that “Ms. Paley was among the earliest American writers to explore the lives of women — mostly Jewish, mostly New Yorkers — in all their dailiness.” Lilly Rivlin’s recent documentary, “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts,” screening March 27 at the Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival, brings together a chorus of voices from friends, family and colleagues to Paley herself, to convey a powerful portrait of an artist, poet, teacher and political figure whose depictions of the everyday lives of women had, and continue to have, a deep and powerful impact.