Stories of Exile Book Discussion Series

The Yiddish Book Center’s “Stories of Exile” Reading Groups for Public Libraries is a reading and discussion program to engage teens and adults in thinking about experiences of displacement, migration, and diaspora. In this program, we will discuss three books of Yiddish literature in translation, and one book related to the experience of a more recent immigrant group.

Using Yiddish literature as a portal, we will read works in translation that explore narratives which grapple with questions of homelands, journeys, identity, and belonging. We will compare these works written in Yiddish in the early and mid-20th century to a work by a contemporary writer from a recent immigrant group.

We will be reading three books translated from Yiddish which are published by the Yiddish Book Center. A fourth book, which focuses on a more recent immigrant group, will be included. One session will be a screening of the movie Enemies: A Love Story (1989), based on the book by Isaac Bashevis Singer. An additional session will feature a speaker from a local immigrant organization.

There will also be an optional field trip to a performance of Paula Vogel’s Indecent at the Wilbury Theater. Indecent tells the true story behind Sholem Asch’s God Of Vengeance, a Yiddish play that transferred to Broadway in 1922 and was shut down by the police, six weeks after opening at the Apollo Theater on 42nd Street, for offensive content.  God of Vengeance, written by Asch when he was in his 20’s, tells the story of a bourgeois brothel owner whose daughter falls in love with one of his prostitutes.

The group is limited to fifteen people and we hope you will attend all sessions.

The schedule is as follows:

April 19- On the Landing- Yenta Mash

May 3- The Glatstein Chronicles- Jacob Glatstein, Part l

May 17- The Glatstein Chronicles Part ll

June 7- Enemies: A Love Story (movie) 6-8:30

June 21- In the Land of the Postscript– Chava Goldfarb

July 12- Speaker

July 26- The Namesake- Jumpa Lahiri

Please register. Once you have done so, you can come to the Library to pick up copies of On the Landing and The Glatstein Chronicles. In the Land of the Postscript will be coming out in May. You can request a copy of The Namesake by calling the Library or placing a hold from the Ocean State Libraries catalog at home.

This series will run again in the Fall in the afternoon. Dates to be announced.

This reading group series is supported by a grant from the Yiddish Book Center. The Yiddish Book Center’s “Stories of Exile” Reading Groups for Public Libraries is made possible by a gift from Sharon Karmazin.

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