ellenkushner | Entries tagged with women's history

No, really, I insist. If you're near NYC, see Liz Duffy Adams' play "Or," if you possibly can. It's about a woman who wants to be a famous writer, and theatre people, and kings with deliciously long hair, and language and gender. See?

Tix are $20 if you turn up 1 hr before the show (and there are still seats.) The NYTimes loved it, and was not wrong to mention Stoppard in the review, I think. If you can't go - or you need encouraging - Ms. Adams has kindly given me permission to print her Prologue
( here: )

See? As

deliasherman said; written for us!

Skip the jokes, OK? I'm really sick of them. My mother never tells me to "Eat a little something" - indeed, she looks askance when I announce that I'm hungry - which I am every couple of hours, and as a result can't believe everyone else isn't, too, which is why I'm always offering people food. My mother does not "guilt" me when I don't call her often enough; indeed, when I do call her, she gets antsy after about 10 minutes and says, "Well, that's enough for now." My mother keeps a kosher kitchen and reads fluent Hebrew. When she was 17, her parents caught her packing her bags to run away to fight for Israeli independence, and grounded her. All 3 of her children have Biblical middle names. She's a Jewish mother.

The Jewish Women's Archive, a terrific organization I worked with some in Boston, invites us to post your own photos of our Jewish Mothers on their Flickr page.

In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month and in celebration of Mother's Day, the Jewish Women's Archive is creating a special photo collection about "Jewish Mothers."

Photos can show a Jewish mother, now or in the past, in any context -- mothers at home or at work; mothers in the family and in the community; mothers of different generations and family constellations; formal portraits or candid snapshots.

How would you like to represent Jewish mothers?

Who are my heroes?

The friends & family who slogged through the slush and sleet and puddles and malfunctioning subways to see "KlezNut" tonight at 7:00!

Thank you, guys.

Meanwhile, back in the Women's Dressing Room (where the conversation's always pretty lively), we figured out just how young is Really Young when Julie started singing "Nothing Compares to You" and found our lead (a college student playing Sara) had never even heard of Sinead O'Connor.

I immediately upped the ante by starting "No Guilt" by the Waitresses. Nobody. Nada. However, they all loved it, so I have looked it up and found it online for all to enjoy.

Here. It's the world's greatest post-breakup empowerment song. Even if half the things she's learned to do no longer exist.

If you don't even get what I told them, I don't even KNOW anybody in Toronto means, ask someone who was paying phone bills back before you lost your first tooth to explain.

• The elegant and affordable paperback edition of Delia Sherman's Changeling will be released on July 17th!

• We've sold Finnish rights to Thomas the Rhymer (to Vaskikirjat). I'm so happy. The translator, Johanna Vainikainen-Uusitalo, I met at the Dutch Worldcon shortly after the book came out, and she says she's been dreaming of translating it ever since - we've already had some great discussions about the (non-)intersection of British & Finnish mythic material . . . and she's a friend of author Johanna Sinisalo, whose wonderful Troll won the Tiptree. Is there a trip to Finland in our future? One can only dream. . . .

• A friend of a friend sent word of her new book, Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion (Beacon Press, August); author & rabbi Danya Ruttenberg wrote me: It's part-memoir, part cultural criticism, about the personal and political implications of taking on a religious discipline. It's the story of my own post-dotcom, punk rock Third Wave move from atheism into traditional (feminist) Judaism... ( Read more... )

On one of my good panels at Lunacon last week (or two), I was wracking my brains to remember the name of the very subtle Joanna Russ epistolatory story about the Victorian schoolfriends - yeah, it's got vampires & lesbians, but I first read it at the where most of that went right by me, and it just gave me a thrill, a chill, and an influence. Lisa & Josh just wrote to remind me that it's "My Dear Emily."

Has anyone else read it? (And if not, where can you find it?! It ought to be in print!)

Clearly, someone should write a novel about this woman - or at least give her a walk-on in as many period pieces as possible:

"When Annie Cohen Kopchovsky (who adopted the decidedly less ethnic name of "Annie Londonderry") left Boston in June 1894, she was a young woman with a 42-pound bicycle, one change of underwear, a revolver, and a dream of adventure and financial independence. Her epic journey around the world by bicycle turned this Jewish immigrant and mother of three into an international celebrity. In Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride, author Peter Zheutlin vividly recounts the story of this audacious woman in a highly readable blend of social history and travel narrative."

Gakked from the Jewish Women's Archives, who are sponsoring a Lunch Talk with the author in Boston on March 18th. They are also collecting stories, photos, interviews, etc. that document the experiences of Jewish American women during the Second World War. You can help, no matter where you live.

The Jewish Women's Archive (jwa.org) has posted a fine and interesting tribute (by novelist Cathleen Schine) to the late Madeleine Stern, an antiquarian bookseller who, with her lifelong Best Friend, Leona Rostenberg, rediscovered the missing thrillers of Louisa May ("Jo") Alcott. If you didn't know about these women, you should! There are links to other amazing women on this terrific site, including journalist/rock critic Ellen Willis (dammit! I didn't know she'd died!), Grace Paley, and scholar & "ritual innovator" Savina Teubal, who created the women's Simchat Hochmah ["Joy of Wisdom"] ritual for becoming an elder.

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PUGGY'S HILL

Ellen's Journal

Entries tagged with women's history

OR, (through Dec. 13th)

What's a Jewish Mother?

heroes & waitresses

a few last words on books

"My Dear Emily"

Jews on Bikes

Madeleine Stern

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October 2014

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