Polish Profiles and Other Stories PDF Download

Author: Kaya Mirecka Ploss
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Polish people
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Author: Chana Blankshteyn
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814349293
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
Translation of Chana Blankshteyn’s stories depicting the tumultuous interwar years in Europe. Fear and Other Storiesis a translation from Yiddish to English of the collected stories of Chana Blankshteyn (~1860–1939), a woman who may be almost entirely forgotten now but was widely admired during her long and productive life. The mere existence of these stories is itself a remarkable feat as the collection was published in July 1939, just before the Nazis invaded Poland and two weeks before Blankshteyn’s death. Anita Norich’s introduction argues that this is not a work of Holocaust literature (there are no death camps, partisans or survivors of WWII), but anti-Semitism is palpable, as is the threat of war and its aftermath. What could it have felt like to live under these conditions? How might a woman who was a feminist, a Jew, and an activist understand the recent past of war and revolution through which she had lived and also confront the horror that was beginning to unfold? The nine stories in this volume take place primarily in Vilna, as well as various parts of Europe. As if presaging what was to come, World War I and Russian civil wars are the backdrops to these stories, as Jews and non-Jews find themselves under German occupation or caught up in the revolutionary fervor that promised them much and took away almost everything. The young women in Blankshteyn’s stories insist on their independence, on equality with their lovers, and on meaningful work. Like the men in the stories, they study, work, and yearn for love. The situations in which these characters find themselves may be unfamiliar to a contemporary reader, but their reactions to the turmoil, the frighteningly changing times, and the desire for love and self-expression are deeply resonant with today’s audience. The history may be specific, but the emotions are universal. Blankshteyn’s stories are both a view of the final gasp of Eastern European Jewish culture and a compelling modern perspective on the broader world. Students and scholars of history and culture, women’s literature, and translation studies will wonder how they’ve gone this long without reading Blankshteyn’s work.

Author: Abraham Cahan
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486122573
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Yekl (1896), the first novel upon which the much acclaimed film Hester Street was based, was probably the first novel in English that had a hero from the New York's East Side.

Author: Rhoda H. Halperin
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292788479
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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In the global world of the twenty-first century, class boundaries are subtle and permeable, though real nonetheless. Markers of identity, authenticity, and belonging can change with a gesture or a glance, making people feel they do or don't belong in certain places, with certain people, at certain times. In these powerfully written ethnographic stories, Rhoda Halperin maps the boundaries of class by examining three themes: crossing class boundaries, class creativity, and class vulnerability. In telling these stories, Halperin draws on a wealth of ethnographic experiences in this country and abroad. Her book challenges class stereotypes in ways that touch on universals across cultures and over time.

Author: Horacio Quiroga
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292753519
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Tales of horror, madness, and death, tales of fantasy and morality: these are the works of South American master storyteller Horacio Quiroga. Author of some 200 pieces of fiction that have been compared to the works of Poe, Kipling, and Jack London, Quiroga experienced a life that surpassed in morbidity and horror many of the inventions of his fevered mind. As a young man, he suffered his father's accidental death and the suicide of his beloved stepfather. As a teenager, he shot and accidentally killed one of his closest friends. Seemingly cursed in love, he lost his first wife to suicide by poison. In the end, Quiroga himself downed cyanide to end his own life when he learned he was suffering from an incurable cancer. In life Quiroga was obsessed with death, a legacy of the violence he had experienced. His stories are infused with death, too, but they span a wide range of short fiction genres: jungle tale, Gothic horror story, morality tale, psychological study. Many of his stories are set in the steaming jungle of the Misiones district of northern Argentina, where he spent much of his life, but his tales possess a universality that elevates them far above the work of a regional writer. The first representative collection of his work in English, The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories provides a valuable overview of the scope of Quiroga's fiction and the versatility and skill that have made him a classic Latin American writer.

Author: Aleksandra Ziólkowska-Boehm
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0761869840
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
A full understanding of the historical process must include studies of the social and economic conditions of societies as well as biographies of the people on which a clear understanding of history is based—but not just the “great” people. Biographies of “average” individuals, who exist in a society, have their own experiences and are acted upon by their surrounding environments, are essential to a clear and complete understanding of the past and its influence on the present. In this respect, Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm has made a major contribution to furthering the understanding of World War II, and especially the part played by Poland and Poles, with her compilation of individual biographies of people who participated in many of its formative events. Ziolkowska-Boehm’s protagonists include a variety of people and experiences that enhance the usefulness of the volume. There are: Tadeusz Brzeziński, a member of the Polish diplomatic corps; the hero who escaped the Lwów ghetto to fight in the Warsaw Uprising and later founded a theatre group in Montréal; a pilot who escaped from the Soviet Union to fly fighters over Great Britain; a photographer of the Warsaw Uprising; a nurse during the Warsaw Uprising; a personal memories of the post-war era move to the United States; a person who was forcefully deported with her family to the Soviet Urals, later escaping to the Middle East and eventually Mexico; the boy who, though only eight when the war began, but survived Pawiak Prison, moved to Brazil, and became an internationally-known poet and artist.

Author: Eudora Welty
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0156966107
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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A collection of stories which capture the joys and sorrows of life in the deep South.

Author: Kaya Mirecka Ploss
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781505820287
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The young Polish diplomat and soldier of the Underground who told Western powers about the Holocaust, the bandit who danced with an empress, the inventor of sound motion pictures, the pioneering woman physician, the man who was at the same time a Polish general, a French general, an Austrian count and the Emperor of Madagascar - meet them, and many others, in the pages of this fascinating book. Through the perceptive observations and charming style of Kaya Mirecka Ploss you will be introduced to a host of unforgettable people, each rooted in Kaya's native Poland. Kings and commoners, saints and eccentrics, artists and scientists, historical figures and legends, all come to life through her words. Drawing on a childhood rich in Polish customs and traditions as well as on lifelong research in Polish history and culture, she paints vivid portraits of world-renowned figures, many of whom she has personally known, and of ordinary people with extraordinary stories to tell. Polish history and the place of Poles in American history are illuminated through these very personal essays. Kaya Mirecka Ploss brings to these profiles and stories the eye of an experienced observer, the heart of a patriot, and the skill of a storyteller.

Author: Hugh Garner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Author: P. G. Wodehouse
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1442931507
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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