Lost on the Map of the World: Jewish-American Women's Quest for Home in Essays and Memoirs, 1890-Present

Lost on the Map of the World explores Jewish-American women's enduring quest from ca. 1890 to the present to find a home(land) where they can have a Jewish identity and still enjoy gender equality. Originally, many were torn between obedience to confining patriarchal tradition and the attractions of an upwardly mobile secular lifestyle. Others opposed all traditional patriarchal constraints against women everywhere and engaged in political activism to improve the quality of all lives, not only their own. In contrast, many 'new wave' Jewish-American women have succeeded in integrating feminism into their Jewish identity, although they have so far failed in their quest to do so in Israel.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Philippe Codde: A Willing Embrace of the Shadow: Cultural and Textual Hybridity in Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers - Barbara Finkelstein: Return to Poland - Ranen Omer-Sherman: O, my Shehena who shall live in your tent?: Gender, Diaspora, and the Ambivalence of Return in E. M. Broner's A Weave of Women - Phillipa Kafka: From Pariah to Professor Emerita - Tobin Belzer: Written in and Read out: Why Erica Jong's Fear of Flying was not Considered Jewish Writing - Batya Weinbaum: Narrative from the Field - Batya Weinbaum: The Candelabra and the Typewriter - Ruth Knafo Setton: Searching for God in the Sierra - Dina Elenbogen: Selections from Drawn from Water.

About the Author :
The Editor: Phillipa Kafka, Professor Emerita and former Director of Women's Studies, Kean University in Union, New Jersey, is the author of four books: The Great White Way: African American Women Writers and American Success Mythologies; (Un)Doing the Missionary Position: Gender Asymmetry in Contemporary Asian American Women's Writing; (Out)Classed Women: Contemporary Chicana Writers on Inequitable Gendered Power Relations; and Saddling La Gringa: Gatekeeping in Literature by Contemporary Latina Writers. She received her Ph.D. in English literature at New York University.

Review :
'Lost on the Map of the World' is a unique and powerful collection of essays and memoirs that gives voice to the hopes, yearnings and inevitable contradictions inherent in Jewish American women's search for a place in which they can truly feel "at home," a place free of sexism and anti-Semitism, a place that does not yet exist. In this context, the contributors offer new readings of well-known fictional texts as diverse as Anzia Yezierska's 'Bread Givers', E. M. Broner's 'A Weave of Women', and Erica Jong's 'Fear of Flying'. The memoirs, set in places as diverse as post-Holocaust Poland, Mexico, Israel, and the United States, offer an intimate and honest portrayal of the struggle to develop Jewish/feminist personal and professional identity. This combination of critical readings and personal reflections make this book an excellent choice for a wide variety of classes, especially in Women's Studies, Jewish Studies, American Studies and Ethnic Studies. (Evelyn Torton Beck, Professor of Women's Studies and Jewish Studies, University of Maryland, College Park)