Shush!
Subtitle: Growing up Jewish under Stalin, a memoir
By: Emil Draitser.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Berkeley
Language: eng
Number of pages: 301
ISBN-13: 9780520254466
Subjects: Draitser, Emil, -- 1937- -- Childhood and youth; Jews -- Ukraine -- Odesa -- Biography; Odesa (Ukraine) -- Biography
Genres: Biography.
Description: "The old man wears a skullcap, and I m puzzled and secretly irritated: why declare to everybody that you re a Jew?" Growing up in Odessa in Soviet Ukraine in the post-Holocaust years, under Stalin, Draitser despises his Jewish identity. Mocked at school, he absorbs the virulent anti-Semitism. He hates Yiddish. Now a professor of Russian at Hunter College in New York, he looks back, blending historical overview with a present-tense narrative of how it feels to be a child taught to despise his culture. More than the commentary, the unforgettable drama--and the answer to the racism--is the celebration of Jewish family life and the richness of Yiddish, from the curse words to the endearments. Papa, a house-painter, is always looking for a famous Jew to celebrate. But the hero is Mama, labeled "dependent" on the official papers, but the true head of the family in their crammed one-roomed apartment, her cooking an expression of love, even when it seems excessive: "Take some more. It's good for you." Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.
Table of contents: title: How I failed my motherland; title: Fathers at war; title: Path to paradise; title: What's in a name!; title: Black shawl; title: Us against them; title: I don't want to have relatives!; title: Friends and enemies; title: The girl of my dreams; title: How they laugh in Odessa; title: Papa and the Soviets; title: A dependent; title: Without declarations; title: Who's who; title: A strange orange; title: Who are you?; title: Passover in Odessa; title: On commissars, cosmopolites, and lightbulb inventors; title: Them!; title: No kith, no kin; title: Grandpa Uri; title: Missing Mikhoels; title: Black on white; title: Time like glass; title: The death of Stalin.