Classics & Contemporary Book Discussion: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Tuesday, October 10, 10:30-11:30am, Adults, Auditorium
The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes-sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous-Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers. (From the publisher)
Copies of the book are available here.
In-person discussion. No registration required.
Stories of Exile Book Discussion: On the Landing: Stories by Yenta Mash
Tuesday, October 17, 2-3:30pm, Adults, Auditorium
Join Dr. Jessica Kirzane to explore and discuss On the Landing: Stories by Yenta Mash. In these sixteen stories, available in English for the first time, prize-winning author Yenta Mash traces an arc across continents, across upheavals and regime changes, and across the phases of a woman's life. Mash's protagonists are often in transit, poised "on the landing" on their way to or from somewhere else. In imaginative, poignant, and relentlessly honest prose, translated from the Yiddish by Ellen Cassedy, Mash documents the lost world of Jewish Bessarabia, the texture of daily life behind the Iron Curtain in Soviet Moldova, and the challenges of assimilation in Israel. Drawing on a lifetime of repeated uprooting, Mash offers an intimate perch from which to explore little-known corners of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A master chronicler of exile, she makes a major contribution to the literature of immigration and resilience.
Registration is required. After registering, you will be contacted by librarian Rachel Garcia and she will provide instructions on how to access a copy of the book in your preferred format. The ebook is always available to read through Hoopla. There are limited print copies of the book available.
This program is part of the library's Stories of Exile series taking place this fall. This series is the result of a grant awarded to Wilmette Public Library and twenty-seven other libraries around the country by the Yiddish Book Center. The Yiddish Book Center is a nonprofit organization working to recover, celebrate, and regenerate Yiddish and modern Jewish literature and culture. With this series, the Center hopes to use Yiddish literature as a lens to reflect upon the experience of exile, displacement, and migration shared across cultures and throughout history.
Dr. Jessica Kirzane is a scholar of Yiddish Studies, specializing in questions of race, gender, and regionalism in American Yiddish fiction. She has translated two Yiddish novels by Miriam Karpilove. Dr. Kirzane’s work to translate Yiddish women writers was recently featured in the The New York Times. After receiving her Ph.D. in Yiddish studies from Columbia University in 2017, Dr. Kirzane became the Assistant Instructional Professor in Yiddish at the University of Chicago. She teaches all levels of Yiddish language, as well as courses in Yiddish culture and literature. She also serves the Editor-in-Chief of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. Dr. Kirzane co-authored the afterward of On the Landing: Stories by Yenta Mash.
For those who would like to purchase a copy of On the Landing: Stories, please support our local independent bookstore, The Book Stall at 811 Elm Street in Winnetka.