Paper Brigade Vol­ume Six

2023/5783

Fea­tur­ing inter­views with Michael W. Twit­ty, Sloane Crosley, Gary Shteyn­gart, and Claire Stan­ford; a Jew­ish lit­er­ary map of India; five YA authors on mytho­log­i­cal Jew­ish crea­tures; and more. 

At check­out, you will be giv­en the option to add an elec­tron­ic gift note to this order. 

$25.00
Fea­tures

The Joy of Shmutz
Feli­cia Berliner

My Fam­i­ly’s Grind­ing Stone
Esther David

A Ben­gali Play in the War­saw Ghetto
Jai Chakrabar­ti

How to Have a Dis­agree­ment With­out Hav­ing a Fight
S. Bear Bergman
Saul Freedman-Lawson

How Mate­ri­als Speak
Gen­naRose Nethercott

Moth­ers and Others
Melis­sa R. Klapper

Strug­gling Our Way Toward Col­lec­tive Narration
Sam Cohen

Sev­en Years with Stella
Michael Frank

Trans­la­tion

<p>Fur­ther­more<br /><strong>Miron C. Izak­son, trans­lat­ed by Joseph Faust</strong></p>

Inter­views

<p>Michael W. Twit­ty, Alyson Rich­man, and Shaunna J. Edwards<br /><strong>Lau­ra Arnold Leibman</strong></p>

<p>Gary Shteyn­gart and Claire Stanford<br /><strong>Stephanie But­nick</strong></p>

<p>Emi Watan­abe Cohen, Sacha Lamb, Rebec­ca Podos, Aden Poly­doros, and Gavriel Savit

<p>Sloane Crosley<br /><strong>Becca Kantor</strong></p>

Poet­ry

<p>Candles for Artemisia<br /><strong>Elisheva Fox</strong></p>

<p>The Immi­nent Decline of Every­thing We’ve Under­stood To Be What Gov­erns Our Priv­i­leged Dai­ly Lives<br /><strong>Daniel Khalastchi</strong></p>

<p>Christ­mas Day<br /><strong>Julia Kolchin­sky Dasbach</strong></p>

Fic­tion
Map

<p>Jewish Book Council’s Lit­er­ary Map of India<br /><strong>Katherine Messenger</strong></p>

Excerpts

<p>Sephardi Voices<br /><strong>Henry Green and Richard Stursberg</strong></p>

<p>Violins and Hope<br /><strong>Daniel Levin</strong></p>

2022 in Review

To Our Readers

Pro­grams & Publications

Index of Book Reviews

2022 – 2023 Net­work Authors

JBC Net­work Communities

2021 Nation­al Jew­ish BookAwards 

Natan Notable Books

Note from the Editor

Often, the way we tell a sto­ry is as impor­tant as the sto­ry itself.

In our polar­ized world, this is on the minds of many Paper Brigade con­trib­u­tors. Some exam­ine how nar­ra­tives can — inten­tion­al­ly or not — pre­clude oth­ers. In a short sto­ry by Lee­or Ohay­on, Ashkenor­ma­tive retellings of his­to­ry exclude the Mizrahi pro­tag­o­nist by plac­ing the Holo­caust at the cen­ter of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty. In a con­ver­sa­tion with Gary Shteyn­gart, Claire Stan­ford observes that this kind of bina­ry sto­ry­telling is only rein­forced by apps and online plat­forms that push us toward a sim­pli­fied cat­e­go­riza­tion” of our lives.

So how do we cre­ate a space for indi­vid­u­als’ sto­ries to coex­ist as part of a larg­er Jew­ish nar­ra­tive? For Sam Cohen, this comes down to a lin­guis­tic shift — the melt­ing of the I into the we” — that lets peo­ple tran­scend dif­fer­ent opin­ions and come togeth­er as a mot­ley col­lec­tive.” Feli­cia Berlin­er also describes lan­guage as a tool for hon­or­ing both per­son­al and group iden­ti­ty. Com­bin­ing Yid­dish and Eng­lish allows the pro­tag­o­nist of her nov­el to rec­on­cile her Hasidic upbring­ing and the sec­u­lar world she dis­cov­ers online.

Oth­er writ­ers remind us that Jew­ish sto­ries can be enhanced by a lan­guage that goes beyond words,” as Gen­naRose Nether­cott notes. For her, this lan­guage is pup­petry; for orphans in the War­saw Ghet­to, as Jai Chakrabar­ti explains, it was act­ing in a Ben­gali play that pro­ject­ed a sense of hope and pos­si­bil­i­ty.” And some sto­ries can be passed down with­out any ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion at all. Michael W. Twit­ty, Shaunna J. Edwards, and Alyson Rich­man explore how sewing and cook­ing are repos­i­to­ries of Black and Jew­ish history.

Of course, as still oth­er writ­ers and artists in this issue point out, nar­rat­ing is only one half of sto­ry­telling. The oth­er half is lis­ten­ing. Our hope is that, by bind­ing dis­parate sto­ries into the mot­ley col­lec­tive” you hold in your hands, the mul­ti­fac­eted whole of today’s Jew­ish lit­er­ary voic­es will be heard.

—Bec­ca Kan­tor, Edi­to­r­i­al Director