INTERVIEWS
National Endowment for the Arts
Vox Tablet
Lambda Literary
REVIEWS
Philip Jason, The Washington Independent Review of Books “[A] strikingly intelligent and emotionally wrenching narrative.”
The Gay & Lesbian Review “A remarkable work of reconstruction . . . As usual, Faderman’s seemingly effortless prose is the result of years of patient research. As far as possible, she has made sure that the past will be accurately remembered.”
Jonathan Kirsch, The Jewish Journal “To be sure, the Holocaust figures crucially in [Lillian Faderman’s] new memoir . . . but her book is more than a testimony of the Holocaust— it is a love story, a family memoir and, above all, an American tale.”
Carol Poll, Jewish Book Council “Faderman is a skilled storyteller and a careful documentarian . . . the historical details in the book have been provided by extensive research. It is these historical details and Faderman’s lyrical storytelling skill that make this book such an inviting read.”
Midwest Book Review “A gripping personal testimony. Author Lillian Faderman shares her mother's story of immigrating to America with high hopes of dancing, only to be swept up in the undercurrents of New York, and the struggles of being a worker in the garment industry. . . . A must for history and memoir collections focusing on personal tales.”
Nick Pachelli, The Advocate “Faderman expertly explores a jarring view into the immigrant life of Jewish Holocaust survivors living in the US.”
Booklist “As Faderman vividly chronicles her mother’s intense personality and complex experiences, she also freshly illuminates the Jewish immigrant experience.”
Make/shift “Faderman commands her material in this page-turner—no small feat with a subject so close to home.”
BLURBS
“Faderman’s story of her immigrant mother is so vividly imagined that you can taste the borscht Mary eats, squirm at the claustrophobia of her tiny rented room, and be swept up in the sensual delight that will betray her.”
—Janice Steinberg, author of The Tin Horse
“This book is a work of originality, written with such imaginative sympathy that I read it with unabating pleasure from beginning to end.”
—Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments
“Lillian Faderman is an extraordinary storyteller, one of the few who can tell a painful story with a complex ending—and imbue it with humor, sensuality, and earthy grace, in every sentence.”
—Amy Bloom, author of Away
“This is an exquisite piece of history—both resonantly personal and full of revelatory moments in the history of women, and of New York in the early days of the garment workers union and the shadow of the Holocaust. The sympathy and understanding Faderman shows for her immigrant mother and her whole family reminded me again of what I love about memoir. This is not just a story; these are lives on the page.”
—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
“My Mother’s Wars tells the aching story of immigrant factory workers in the decades preceding World War II—sad lives made sadder by the terrifying knowledge that their families in Europe are being extinguished. The book is part memoir, part reconstruction . . . and all artistry.”
—Edith Pearlman, author of Binocular Vision
EXCERPT
From the Preface
My mother kept no secrets from me about her strange and difficult life before I was born. For most of my growing-up years, she and I lived together in a single furnished room, “by a missus,” as such living arrangements used to be called. I think our symbiosis was probably much more powerful than the usual between mother and child because most of the time there was no one but the two of us, no other presence to distract or divert. The intensity of my focus on her was compounded, I imagine, because our daily life was played out in the space of no more than ninety square feet. In that tight proximity, she told me things because she had no one else to tell them to. I saw things because she had nowhere else to go and hide. I struggled to understand things because she was my constant care and study and love.
But the older I got, the less I understood. In the glorious hope and brashness of my young womanhood I knew only that the choices she’d made, which had brought her, and me along with her, to that lonely, airless furnished room of my childhood, had been incomprehensibly foolish, and that her mistakes would never be mine.
Thirty years after my mother’s death, my young-womanhood long gone, a sadness suddenly came upon me with the thought that though I’d known all her secrets, I hadn’t known her. I think that sadness was triggered because I’d been trying to relearn Yiddish, the language I usually spoke with her before I started going to school; and in a book I’d bought in order to practice reading in Yiddish, I came upon a lullaby by the writer Sholem Aleichem; it was one I remembered her singing when I was a child.
Bay dayn vigl zitst dayn mameh,
Zingt a lid un veynt.
Vest amol farshteyn mistame
Vos zi hot gemeynt.
I translate it this way:
Near your cradle sits your mother,
Singing a song and weeping.
Perhaps someday you’ll understand
What her tears meant.
My Mother’s Wars is my attempt to understand.
REVIEWS
Philip Jason, The Washington Independent Review of Books “[A] strikingly intelligent and emotionally wrenching narrative.”
The Gay & Lesbian Review “A remarkable work of reconstruction . . . As usual, Faderman’s seemingly effortless prose is the result of years of patient research. As far as possible, she has made sure that the past will be accurately remembered.”
Jonathan Kirsch, The Jewish Journal “To be sure, the Holocaust figures crucially in [Lillian Faderman’s] new memoir . . . but her book is more than a testimony of the Holocaust— it is a love story, a family memoir and, above all, an American tale.”
Carol Poll, Jewish Book Council “Faderman is a skilled storyteller and a careful documentarian . . . the historical details in the book have been provided by extensive research. It is these historical details and Faderman’s lyrical storytelling skill that make this book such an inviting read.”
Midwest Book Review “A gripping personal testimony. Author Lillian Faderman shares her mother's story of immigrating to America with high hopes of dancing, only to be swept up in the undercurrents of New York, and the struggles of being a worker in the garment industry. . . . A must for history and memoir collections focusing on personal tales.”
Nick Pachelli, The Advocate “Faderman expertly explores a jarring view into the immigrant life of Jewish Holocaust survivors living in the US.”
Booklist “As Faderman vividly chronicles her mother’s intense personality and complex experiences, she also freshly illuminates the Jewish immigrant experience.”
Make/shift “Faderman commands her material in this page-turner—no small feat with a subject so close to home.”
BLURBS
“Faderman’s story of her immigrant mother is so vividly imagined that you can taste the borscht Mary eats, squirm at the claustrophobia of her tiny rented room, and be swept up in the sensual delight that will betray her.”
—Janice Steinberg, author of The Tin Horse
“This book is a work of originality, written with such imaginative sympathy that I read it with unabating pleasure from beginning to end.”
—Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments
“Lillian Faderman is an extraordinary storyteller, one of the few who can tell a painful story with a complex ending—and imbue it with humor, sensuality, and earthy grace, in every sentence.”
—Amy Bloom, author of Away
“This is an exquisite piece of history—both resonantly personal and full of revelatory moments in the history of women, and of New York in the early days of the garment workers union and the shadow of the Holocaust. The sympathy and understanding Faderman shows for her immigrant mother and her whole family reminded me again of what I love about memoir. This is not just a story; these are lives on the page.”
—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
“My Mother’s Wars tells the aching story of immigrant factory workers in the decades preceding World War II—sad lives made sadder by the terrifying knowledge that their families in Europe are being extinguished. The book is part memoir, part reconstruction . . . and all artistry.”
—Edith Pearlman, author of Binocular Vision
EXCERPT
From the Preface
My mother kept no secrets from me about her strange and difficult life before I was born. For most of my growing-up years, she and I lived together in a single furnished room, “by a missus,” as such living arrangements used to be called. I think our symbiosis was probably much more powerful than the usual between mother and child because most of the time there was no one but the two of us, no other presence to distract or divert. The intensity of my focus on her was compounded, I imagine, because our daily life was played out in the space of no more than ninety square feet. In that tight proximity, she told me things because she had no one else to tell them to. I saw things because she had nowhere else to go and hide. I struggled to understand things because she was my constant care and study and love.
But the older I got, the less I understood. In the glorious hope and brashness of my young womanhood I knew only that the choices she’d made, which had brought her, and me along with her, to that lonely, airless furnished room of my childhood, had been incomprehensibly foolish, and that her mistakes would never be mine.
Thirty years after my mother’s death, my young-womanhood long gone, a sadness suddenly came upon me with the thought that though I’d known all her secrets, I hadn’t known her. I think that sadness was triggered because I’d been trying to relearn Yiddish, the language I usually spoke with her before I started going to school; and in a book I’d bought in order to practice reading in Yiddish, I came upon a lullaby by the writer Sholem Aleichem; it was one I remembered her singing when I was a child.
Bay dayn vigl zitst dayn mameh,
Zingt a lid un veynt.
Vest amol farshteyn mistame
Vos zi hot gemeynt.
I translate it this way:
Near your cradle sits your mother,
Singing a song and weeping.
Perhaps someday you’ll understand
What her tears meant.
My Mother’s Wars is my attempt to understand.
