Memorial Hall Library

The girl from Human Street, ghosts of memory in a Jewish family, Roger Cohen

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

collective biography

illustrationsgenealogical tables

index present

non fiction

The girl from Human Street

bibliography

881279996

Roger Cohen

ghosts of memory in a Jewish family

Award-winning New York Times columnist Roger Cohen turns a compassionate yet discerning eye on the legacy of his own forebears. As he follows them across continents and decades, mapping individual lives that diverge and intertwine, vital patterns of struggle and resilience, valued heritage and evolving loyalties (religious, ethnic, national), converge into a resonant portrait of cultural identity in the modern age. Beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing through to the present day, Cohen tracks his family's story of repeated upheaval, from Lithuania to South Africa, and then to England, the United States, and Israel. It is a tale of otherness marked by overt and latent anti-Semitism, but also otherness as a sense of inheritance. We see Cohen's family members grow roots in each adopted homeland even as they struggle to overcome the loss of what is left behind and to adapt. At the heart of The Girl from Human Street is the powerful and touching relationship between Cohen and his mother, that "girl." Tortured by the upheavals in her life yet stoic in her struggle, she embodies her son's complex inheritance.--From publisher description

Circle of disquiet -- Bones in the forest -- Gin and two -- In the barrel -- Château Michel -- Picnic in a cemetery -- Patient number 9413 -- Jews in a whisper -- Madness in the brain -- The lark sings and falls -- Death in the Holy Land -- The ghosts of repetition -- A single chain

Human StreetGhosts of memory in a Jewish family