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 ]
IF YOU WERE a depressed young woman in the 1990s, Elizabeth Wurtzel’s memoir Prozac Nation (1994) was required reading. I remember standing in a New Jersey Barnes & Noble, tenderly taking the book from the shelf, and turning it over in my hands. Who was this woman on the cover? She looked so... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-02-14 13:30:58 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Free agent NFL quarterback and social activist Colin Kaepernick plans to publish a memoir via his own publishing venture and release an audiobook version of the untitled book via an exclusive deal with Audible. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-02-14 05:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Shetland literature has a short history. Or, more accurately, the long history of Shetland literature has been truncated — the result of a double disadvantage, as far as official histories are concerned: an oral culture, in which few people could read or write, and a language that died out... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2020-02-13 12:54:04 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Colin Kaepernick announced on Thursday that he will release a memoir this year under his new imprint, Kaepernick Publishing. He also has partnered with Audible for a multiproject deal. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-02-13 12:35:32 UTC ]
More news stories like this
This week on The Maris Review, R. Eric Thomas joins Maris Kreizman to discuss his new book, Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America. On choosing the moments that go into a memoir: Maris Kreizman: Your memoir collection is very much about figuring out who you are and being comfortable... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-13 09:47:59 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Explorer and biologist Roman Dial reflects on parenting in this memoir of the search for his son, who vanished while solo hiking in Costa Rica. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-02-12 23:38:32 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Explorer and biologist Roman Dial reflects on parenting in this memoir of the search for his son, who vanished while solo hiking in Costa Rica. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-02-12 23:38:32 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The pop star-turned-fashion mogul was always defined by men. Now, she’s defining herself. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-02-11 13:43:43 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Adrienne Miller’s memoir chronicles her tenure as fiction editor of Esquire in the 1990s and her rocky relationship with David Foster Wallace, the era’s iconic novelist. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-02-11 10:00:07 UTC ]
More news stories like this
When you’re writing a memoir, you find that you’re obliged to confront your own ideas about the nature of memory. In Gore Vidal’s own splendid memoir Palimpsest, he suggests that when we remember an event, we don’t remember it as it actually happened, but rather that we remember our memory of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-11 09:48:31 UTC ]
More news stories like this
James Wood writes about the novelist Daniel Kehlmann, who evokes an era of doctrinal fervor—and brings to life a mythical trickster. Continue reading at New Yorker
[ New Yorker | 2020-02-10 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Vivian Gornick and the revolution that won’t end: John Freeman profiles the author of Unfinished Business. | Lit Hub “What are we to do with the art of profoundly compromised men?” Zan Romanoff on Adrienne Miller’s memoir of life with literary men, including David Foster Wallace. | Lit Hub “It... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-10 09:49:30 UTC ]
More news stories like this
From Secret Barristers to pseudonymous paramedics and White House moles, Anon is writing a lot of books these days – and identifying some unexpected truths“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman,” wrote Virginia Woolf. Today, Anonymous is probably an outraged employee in a public service: a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-02-10 00:00:19 UTC ]
More news stories like this
In her new memoir "Open Book," singer and former reality-TV star Jessica Simpson opens up about sexual abuse, addiction and dating John Mayer. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-02-05 14:54:55 UTC ]
More news stories like this
I feel creatively lost most of the time. It doesn’t matter if I’m beginning a fresh project, wading through the middle, or racing toward the end—I often find myself in a fugue state that makes it impossible for me to understand what I’m doing, even as I’m doing it. This is what I love about […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-05 09:48:59 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Novelist says that in the run-up to the 2016 election, she began to imagine a life where Clinton ‘made different choices, personally and professionally’Hillary Rodham Clinton recounts, in her memoir Living History, how Bill Clinton “asked me to marry him again, and again, and I always said no”.... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-02-04 12:14:07 UTC ]
More news stories like this
A Reese Witherspoon pick, a Silicon Valley memoir and the most talked about book of the year so far. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-02-04 00:16:04 UTC ]
More news stories like this
This week, Kevin Wilson reviews Stephen Wright’s new novel, “Processed Cheese.” In 2006, Laura Miller wrote for the Book Review about “The Amalgamation Polka,” Wright’s novel about the descendant of both ardent abolitionists and unwavering slaveholders. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-01-31 10:00:10 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Because they have nothing to hide about anything, the White House has issued some kind of threat—according to CNN’s Jake Tapper—in a formal letter to former National Security Adviser John Bolton, whose forthcoming memoir from Simon & Schuster contains first-hand accounts of Donald Trump... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-01-29 17:43:05 UTC ]
More news stories like this
In his memoir 'Children of the Land,' poet Marcelo Hernandez Castillo writes of border journeys, family separation and crossing a 'threshold of invisibility.' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-01-29 15:00:08 UTC ]
More news stories like this