October 11, 2011
This collection of stories, poems, and plays by American Jews of Sephardic descent gives voice to a culture previously unheard in a literary canon with a predominantly Eastern European and Ashkenazic accent. Representing only five percent of US Jewish immigrants, Sephardim have necessarily existed on the margins of Jewish and American life. Yet these Jews of Spanish, Greek, and Middle Eastern origins have, as Diane Matza demonstrates, maintained their ethnic identity despite persecution, expulsion, and prolonged cultural insularity.
