“Reuben Sachs” began with the words “Reuben Sachs was the pride of his family,” then showed just how the weight of that pride doomed its subject.
She spoke English in a voice was accented by each of her homes; she sounded like no one else on earth. That was true of her writing, as well.
At the same time the Brontë sisters found they could only publish under male pseudonyms, Grace Aguilar wrote bestsellers under her own name.
If you know about Rahel Varnhagen, it’s probably because of Hannah Arendt.
“There is something of Beckett in Ginzburg’s prose; of Chekhov, whom she greatly admired; and of Shakespeare’s late plays.”
In 2019, the ferociously blended black and Jewish identity to which Fran Ross gave voice remains as boundary-breaking as ever.
Nadezhda Mandelstam’s first name meant “hope,” a resource that would prove scarce in the world into which she was born.
While Olsen saw the world around her to be aswirl in complexity, she also had a remarkable talent for distilling an idea to its essential elements.
This past year, we haven’t shied away from publishing essential stories on Jewish women’s issues.
She lost the presidency — but maybe she’ll win an Emmy?