I have long felt the need to push my feelings about being a Jewish American woman to the background when considering and discussing issues of oppression; British writer and comedian David Baddiel tells me why I feel this way and why I should not.
Jews Don’t Count is a bold polemic, a detailed, vivid, and often witty explanation of why oppression must not be a competitive practice. He explains how Jewishness is made synonymous with privilege by both the political Right and the Left despite lived experience to the contrary. And he makes plain that Jewishness must be explored via race, not religion, for this is what white supremacists do and have always done.
I felt enlightened and empowered by this critical commentary, which argues and illustrates so well how antisemitism is a significant factor in racism worldwide today.
How identity politics failed one particular identity.
'a must read and if you think YOU don't need to read it, that's just the clue to know you do.' SARAH SILVERMAN
'a masterpiece.' STEPHEN FRY
Jews Don't Count is a book for people on the right side of history. People fighting the good fight against homophobia, disablism, transphobia and, particularly, racism. People, possibly, like you. It is the comedian and writer David Baddiel's contention that one type of racism has been left out of this fight. In his unique combination of reasoning, polemic, personal…
This is the first book I’ve read about an Indigenous woman seeking to work with Indigenous women in other countries. I love the vivid, brutal honesty of the author, a Northwest Karuk tribe member named Ursula Pike, who reflects on her trying experiences as a young Peace Corps worker in Bolivia.
She is open about her sexuality, her anxieties, her failures, and her hopelessly naïve belief that because she is of indigenous heritage, she will have a special connection with the native people of Bolivia. She must come to recognize that she has privilege within the poor village where she is placed, and her life and perspectives are vastly different from the Bolivians.
I could not put the book down as I learned in every chapter how Pike willingly interrogates herself, the Peace Corps, and the larger subject of cultural privilege. I am grateful to have learned from her struggles.
A gripping, witty memoir about indigeneity, travel, and colonialism
When she was twenty-five, Ursula Pike boarded a plane to Bolivia and began her term of service in the Peace Corps. A member of the Karuk Tribe, Pike sought to make meaningful connections with Indigenous people halfway around the world. But she arrived in La Paz with trepidation as well as excitement, "knowing I followed in the footsteps of Western colonizers and missionaries who had also claimed they were there to help." In the following two years, as a series of dramatic episodes brought that tension to boiling point, she began…
The author sets up a challenge I could not ignore, and once I began reading, I could not stop. A friend recommended this book, and as soon as I heard its provocative title, I knew I had to read it.
Horn is entirely persuasive in her argument that when we find ourselves fascinated by Jews, it is often dead ones. The veneration of Anne Frank is a perfect example: she is the world’s darling because she did not live to be anything but a perfect victim. But Horn addresses lesser-known obsessions with dead Jews, too, enlightening me about the Jewish history of the Chinese city of Harbin and the little-known “righteous Gentile” Varian Fry.
I love how this book (and the accompanying podcast, an awesome bonus) combines effective research, moving personal experience, and ample wit to reveal the harm an obsession with dead Jews today can be.
Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture-and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks-Horn was troubled to realise what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster travelling exhibition…
George Cukor, the son of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants, was a director determined to achieve Hollywood success at any cost, even though he was gay. What Price Hollywood? explores Cukor’s surprisingly rich presentations of gender and sexuality in his romantic comedies and dramas despite the constraints of the Hollywood studio system.
The book covers themes from women’s friendships and alcoholic men to drag performances and queerness in the musical, addressing many of the nearly 80 films Cukor directed across his 81 years of life.
