BLACK, JEWISH, AND BEAUTIFUL Format: PB - PAPERBACK

<i>Black, Jewish, and Beautiful</i>brings together powerful perspectives and showcases the vastly divergent ways people come to inhabit a shared Blewish, or Black Jewish identity. These voices demonstrate that Black Jewishness is just one dimension of their multifaceted lives as they explore how they feel, think, and make sense of who they are. Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, Sara Feldman, and Brett Ashley Kaplan bring together an array of oral histories, essays, and interviews of Black Jews by birth, others who converted, and those who were raised one way only to discover later that their identity was not what they had thought. The result is a collection of myriad narratives, told through rocky, sometimes-frayed structures. Contributors are open and frank in their discussion of the good, the bad, and the ugly, the heart wrenching, and the beautiful in their experiences. <i>Black, Jewish, and Beautiful</i>is an essential read for anyone interested in the exploration of belonging and the richness of nuanced identity in contemporary life.

<b>Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell</b> is a vocalist, composer, and arranger specializing in music in the Yiddish language. His essays on music and culture have appeared in a number of publications, including <i>Jewish Currents </i>and <i>Moment Magazine.</i> <b>Sara Feldman </b>is lecturer in Yiddish at the University of California, Berkeley. Her recent publications appear in <i>In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies</i>, <i>Oxford Bibliographies</i>, and <i>Artifacts of Orthodox Childhoods.</i> <b>Brett Ashley Kaplan </b>directs the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies and is a professor of comparative and world literature at the University of Illinois. Her books include <i>Unwanted Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representation, Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory, </i>and <i>Jewish Anxiety in the Novels of Philip Roth.</i>