Grow­ing up, Ayelet Tsabari grap­pled with Mizrahi stereo­types — and found inspi­ra­tion in Ofra Haza, Israel’s icon­ic, Yem­i­ni singer.

As the cul­ture of hate, fear, and mis­trust of ​“the oth­er” has increased, YA lit­er­a­ture has stepped up to coun­ter­act it.

Ten years after my grand­fa­ther died, I found myself sort­ing through a shal­low plas­tic bin that held the accu­mu­lat­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion of his life. 

It’s no won­der that Jews, as a dias­poric group, have such rich intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tions: sto­ries are portable and, dare I say, immortal.

Two debut authors dis­cuss their com­ing-of-age nov­els set in the grit­ty New York and Boston of the nineties.