Browsing CategoryMizrahi

Cover girl and other news

So, today I went to pick up the mail and was startled by the magazine I was holding, Jewish Book World, which had my face staring right back at me. And it’s big. Unphotoshoped, fucked-up tooth and frizzy hair big. Inside, there’s a lovely review of my book, a write-up about the award and my essay, “Keeping Promises.” *** More news. I wrote something in HEBREW!!! I know. It’s been so long that I was saddened to discover that I’ve now reversed my sense of insecurity to my mother tongue! It wasn’t easy to write this piece. My words felt…

My Year of Reading Only Writers of Colour

In the beginning of 2014 I made a public pledge to read only writers of colour for a year. My decision was inspired by Lilit Marcus’s essay, “Why I Only Read Books by Women in 2013,”  and by a lifetime of reading mostly works by white authors and not finding myself in the books that I read. In my original post I said many things about my decision but I think the last paragraph sums it pretty well. “I’m choosing to spend the year reading only books by writers of colour, because I want to read more deeply. Because as a…

Event in New York City

I am thrilled to be doing an event in New York City next week, on April 1st. The New America Foundation (“a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States”) invited me to talk about The Best Place on Earth, Mizrahi identity and Israeli contemporary literature at their snazzy Soho location. I get to talk with two fiercely intelligent women, internationally-published and acclaimed journalist Lisa Goldman who is the New America’s Israel-Palestine Initiative director (and whose blog I used to follow when she was a Canadian living…