Frankly Feminist - Edited by Susan Weidman Schneider

EDITOR: Susan Weidman Schneider

GENRE: Anthology, Jewish Cultural Fiction, Feminism

RATING: 3.7 stars.

In a Nutshell: A varied and thought-provoking story collection with Jewish women as the central characters. The stories are from Lilith Magazine, published over the last four-odd decades. Worth a read.

“The official canon of Western literature had dismissed, overlooked, or simply ignored the existence of genius outside the narrow rubric of Western civilization: male, white, and European.”

When I read this in the foreword of this collection, I knew I had gotten my hands on something intelligent and candid. Indeed, the forty-four stories that are a part of this collection are brutally truthful in various ways. With each story having a Jewish woman protagonist, the tales focus on the various issues a Jewish woman might face and how she deals with it.

Where the anthology worked for me:

✔ The collection is organised by theme. While this didn’t offer me much advantage while reading the ARC, I would have certainly appreciated this factor more as a general reader. It becomes easier to pick stories up by mood. The themes aren’t typical but quite stimulating. For instance, the first theme—‘Transitions’—focusses on women instigating a change in their destiny. ‘Transgressions’ has stories connected to rebels, whether in major matters or in minor. ‘Intimacies’ might make you think of romance but the set deals with an astounding range of intimacies. My least favourite section was ‘War’, possibly because I read too much of historical fiction and hence all the stories seemed familiar. Luckily, there were only four stories with this theme.

✔ I loved the intelligence and unpredictability of most of the stories. The vocabulary level is a delight, and the range of Jewish stories contained (both in terms of countries and years) is impressive.

✔ While the focus is primarily on the Jewish experience, at least 80% of the stories deal with women’s experiences in general. I was a bit apprehensive at first about picking this up since I am not much aware of Jewish customs and beliefs. But in most of the stories, my lack of knowledge wasn’t a hurdle.

✔ The ‘feminism’ promised by the title isn’t as brash as I would have expected. We know that feminism is reality comes in various shades, and this is exactly how it is depicted in the book. All the women protagonists are strong characters, but not necessarily so in a rebellious way. I loved the multifarious shades of feminism depicted by the stories.

Where the anthology could have worked better for me:

⚠ Quite a few of the stories have Yiddish words, but most didn’t hamper my understanding. At the same time, a glossary would have been helpful.

⚠ The author bios and the year in which the story was first published are mentioned in a separate section at the end of the book. I would have preferred the contributor bios to be included at the end of their specific story, especially as the 44 stories have been selected from over two hundred that Lilith magazine has published over 45 years. Having an idea of when the story was first published would have given a better understanding of the trouble faced by the protagonist then.

⚠ I don’t prefer anthologies with more than 20 stories as they get saturating after a while, and even makes progress a bit slow-going. This is a personal preference and not a shortcoming of the book per se.

As always, I gave the stories individual ratings, and most of them reached/crossed the 3 star mark. Mentioning all these would be too extensive a list, so here are my top favourites with 4.5-5 stars each.

⭐The New World - Esther Singer Kreitman: The very first story of the book, and it left me speechless!

⭐A Wedding in Persia - Gina Barkhordar Nahai: One of the few truly happy stories of the book.

⭐News to Turn the World - Katie Singer: The emotions in this one, wow!

⭐My Daughter's Boyfriends - Penny Jackson: Loved the progressions and the ending.

(All the above are stories from the ‘Transitions’ section: it was my favourite section of the entire book, with each tale being impactful.)

⭐The Wedding Photographer's Assistant - Ilana Stanger-Ross: Absolutely did not go in the direction I thought it would.

⭐Probabilities - Elizabeth Edelglass: Enjoyed the relationship conundrum in this one.

⭐Lot's Wife - Michal Lemberger: A twist on the Biblical tale. Lot’s wife gets her due in this tale!

⭐Zhid - Yona Zeldis McDonough: Quite extensive and layered for a short work.

⭐Ironing - Sarah Seltzer: Ah, the problems of teenage life and first crushes. Not a sweet story though!

⭐Flight - Phyllis Carol Agins: Poignant!

All in all, the quality of the stories and the writing makes this a collection to be savoured over a period of time than to be gulped in a go. Definitely recommended to short fiction lovers, regardless of gender or culture.

3.7 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each story.

My thanks to Ms. Olivia McCoy for a complimentary copy of “Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.