Jewish Life in Harbin, China: A Conversation with Jean Hoffmann Lewanda by Susan Blumberg-Kason Interviews [email protected] Tue, 01/07/2025 - 07:08 Shalama and Paul, Shanghai, 1950. Photo courtesy of Jean Hoffmann LewandaI met the author Jean Hoffmann Lewanda for lunch this past November in New Jersey, not too far from her home in suburban Philadelphia. Jean is the author of a new book, Shalama: My 96 Seasons in China (Earnshaw, 2024), the story of her mother’s childhood in Harbin, China, and young adult years in Shanghai. Jean’s first book, Witness to History: From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resilience, is an edited edition of her father’s memoir tracing his escape from Nazi-controlled Vienna to the safe shores of Shanghai in the late 1930s. Jean and I originally met online thanks to mutual friends who are historians and the authority on everything Old Shanghai. When we met in person in November, we spoke for hours about publishing Jewish Chinese stories. We expanded this conversation over email. Susan Blumberg-Kason: Thank you, Jean, for continuing our lovely conversation back in November. I don’t remember coming across other authors who have personal connections to both the old Shanghai and Harbin Jewish communities, each of which numbered in the thousands. Your mother was the daughter of Russian Jewish refugees, and your father was an Austrian Jewish refugee. Was it unusual for people in these... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2025-01-07 13:08:24 UTC ]
A hip-hop musical about the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury didn’t exactly scream global phenomenon when it launched on Broadway in 2015. But Lin-Manuel Miranda had such a clear vision for Hamilton that it became exactly that, winning a Pulitzer Prize along the way. Miranda’s boundless... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2024-09-24 12:31:42 UTC ]
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Myself and Other Animals draws on an unfinished memoir and a book from a trip to Australia in 1969, and will coincide with what would have been the author’s 100th birthdayA final posthumous work of autobiography by Gerald Durrell is set to come out at the end of the year, publisher Penguin... Continue reading at The Guardian
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Eric Roberts' memoir isn't a Hollywood reclamation job designed to kick-start a once-buzzy career. Roberts knows all too well that his erratic behavior damaged his relationships with friends and family, including his sister Julia Roberts. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
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In his memoir “Frighten the Horses,” Oliver Radclyffe recalls his gradual awakening to the sexuality and gender identity he spent 40 years denying. Continue reading at The New York Times
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WARNING: This article contains details of abuse. In his new memoir Just Say Yes, Quirks and Quarks host Bob McDonald charts his path from an unhappy and sometimes abusive home to Canada's foremost explainer of all things scientific. Continue reading at CBC
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Tracy O’Neill’s Woman of Interest is a quest memoir: a voyage there and back, out and in. The book recounts the author’s search for her birth mother during the frightening heights of covid, “a pandemic that had miniaturized life.” Enlisting the help of a PI named Joe, a former CIA operative,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
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In the years since this memoir was first published, readers have asked me a number of questions: What does your family think of the book? How did you start writing a memoir in essays? Is the book available in Spanish? The question that took me by surprise, though, came in 2020 on the eve of […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
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