Greenhorns: stories - Softcover

Slotkin, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1935248995 ISBN 13: 9781935248996

Publisher: Leapfrog Press, 2018

Synopsis

The people of Greenhorns reflect the different ways Jewish immigrants took to America in the early 20th century, and how America affected them. A kosher butcher with a gambling problem. A Jewish Pygmalion. A woman whose elegant persona conceals the memory of an unspeakable horror. A boy who struggles to maintain his father’s old-world code of honor on the mean streets of Brooklyn. The “little man who wasn’t there,” whose absence reflects his family’s inability to deal with its painful memories. An immigrant’s son who “discovers America” — its promise and its dark side — as a soldier on leave in WW2. These tales recover the violent circumstances, the emotional and psychological costs of uprooting, which left the immigrant uncertain of his place in America, and show how that uncertainty shaped the lives of their American descendants.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Slotkin has been recognized as one of the leading scholars of American cultural history. He has won awards for nonfiction writing on American history, and for historical fiction. His books include Regeneration Through Violence (1973), which won the Albert Beveridge Prize and was a National Book Award Finalist; The Fatal Environment (1985), which won the Little Big Horn Associates Literary Award; and Gunfighter Nation (1992), a National Book Award Finalist. His novel Abe (2000) won the Michael Shaara Prize for Civil War Fiction. He retired in 2008 as Olin Professor of American Studies (Emeritus) at Wesleyan University.

Review

Historian and novelist Slotkin (The Long Road to Antietam, 2012, etc.) writes more personally in these linked semifictional stories based on his ancestors' immigration from Eastern Europe early in the 20th century. Slotkin makes clear that these stories are based on a range of experiences within his own family. "The Gambler" is about a poker-playing butcher in pre-World War II Brooklyn who's still questioning his decision to emigrate in 1902 without his wife and sons and then not send for them until he felt financially ready four years later, and it sets up the challenges explored throughout the book: the impossible choices faced by immigrants like the butcher, who feels that "in winning he lost"; why some immigrants adapt while others can't; the emotional cost of leaving one's homeland, however inhospitable it's become.... In "Honor," ... a formerly successful grain merchant fails to adapt in America, clinging to values like trust and honor that betray him once he loses the trappings of success. As if Slotkin is arguing Talmudically with himself, that same value system works to several immigrants' advantage in the next story, "The Milkman," in which the title character defines what it is to be a mensch, a good man, whose trust and honor bring unexpected rewards to himself and others. Then comes a counterpunch to optimism, the all too relevant tragedy "Uncle Max and Cousin Yossi," examining the permanent emotional damage caused when a 4-year-old boy is violently wrenched from his family and thought dead only to reappear months later. The humor of Slotkin's end piece, "Greenhorn Nation: A History in Jokes," is pointed to say the least. Painful, riveting, personal, and powerfully universal. --Kirkus

About this edition

• Publisher: Leapfrog Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1935248995
• ISBN 13: 9781935248996
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200