Holocaust Girls: History, Memory, and Other Obsessions

by S.L. Wisenberg

This bracing and vivid collection of essays gives voice to what some American Jews feel but don't express about their uneasy state of mind. These essays creatively and sometimes audaciously address the question of what it means to be an American Jew trying to negotiate overlapping identities—woman, writer, and urban intellectual in search of a moral way. S.L. Wisenberg’s deeply ambivalent connection with the Holocaust reappears throughout these essays as she struggles to find a way to live with history without being swallowed by it.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Autobiography

142 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

About the author

S. L. Wisenberg is the author of three nonfiction booksT. Her latest is The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home, winner of the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press. Her other two nonfics are The Adventures of Cancer Bitch and Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions. Her short-story collection, The Sweetheart Is In, was a Chicago Tribune Notable Book. She has received a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois Arts Council.

Reviews

[Rebecca]

I actually thought this book was great. I found it in a search for scholarly literature about the Holocaust so I spent a lot of the time reading trying to figure out where it fit on the "truth spectrum." It was interesting little essays though, trying in all her feelings of Jewishness, not-Jewishness, social change, connection to genocide. She was doing in her book what I hope to do in my dance. Good job SL!

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much negative thought without much movement and no strong conclusions. Writing feels therapeutic; yet construes itself (through form) as academic with numbered paragraphs.

[Lynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the way Wisenberg writes is just lovely and will definitely be looking for more of her work. Also, anyone who speaks to how I feel about Louis Sullivan's ornamentation at the old Carson Pirie Scott building is alright by me.