My Mother’s Wars
My Mother’s Wars by Lillian Faderman, published by Beacon Press on July 14, 2015, is a memoir that explores the tumultuous life of Faderman’s mother as a Jewish immigrant in 1930s New York. This edition spans 264 pages and is presented in English. The narrative delves into the experiences of a Latvian girl who arrives in America with dreams of becoming a dancer, only to confront the harsh realities of immigrant life, including the struggles faced as a woman and a worker in the garment industry.
Readers will find a detailed account of Faderman’s mother’s journey, from her early ambitions to the challenges of single motherhood and the looming threat of the Holocaust. The memoir captures the essence of life in New York’s Garment District during the Depression, highlighting the social and political issues of the time. Through a combination of family stories, personal documents, and extensive research, Faderman reconstructs a significant chapter in the history of women, workers, and Jewish immigrants, providing insight into the complexities of identity and survival in a changing world.
Official synopsis Publisher
An acclaimed writer on her mother’s tumultuous life as a Jewish immigrant in 1930s New York and her life-long guilt when the Holocaust claims the family she left behind in Latvia
A story of love, war, and life as a Jewish immigrant in the squalid factories and lively dance halls of New York’s Garment District in the 1930s, My Mother’s Wars is the memoir Lillian Faderman’s mother was never able to write. The daughter delves into her mother’s past to tell the story of a Latvian girl who left her village for America with dreams of a life on the stage and encountered the realities of her new world: the battles she was forced to fight as a woman, an immigrant worker, and a Jew with family left behind in Hitler’s deadly path.
The story begins in 1914: Mary, the girl who will become Lillian Faderman’s mother, just seventeen and swept up with vague ambitions to be a dancer, travels alone to America, where her half-sister in Brooklyn takes her in. She finds a job in the garment industry and a shop friend who teaches her the thrills of dance halls and the cheap amusements open to working-class girls. This dazzling life leaves Mary distracted and her half-sister and brother-in-law scandalized that she has become a “good-time gal.” They kick her out of their home, an event with consequences Mary will regret for the rest of her life.
Eighteen years later, still barely scraping by as a garment worker and unmarried at thirty-five, Mary falls madly in love and has a torrid romance with a man who will never marry her, but who will father Lillian Faderman before he disappears from their lives. America is in the midst of the Depression, Hitler is coming to power in Europe, and New York’s garment workers are just beginning to unionize. Mary makes tentative steps to join, despite her lover’s angry opposition. As National Socialism engulfs Europe, Mary realizes she must find a way to get her family out of Latvia, and she spends frenetic months chasing vague promises and false rumors of hope. Pregnant again, after having submitted to two wrenching back-room abortions, and still unmarried, Mary faces both single motherhood and the devastating possibility of losing her entire Eastern European family.
Drawing on family stories and documents, as well as her own tireless research, Lillian Faderman has reconstructed an engrossing and essential chapter in the history of women, of workers, of Jews, and of the Holocaust as immigrants experienced it from American shores.
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