Are you aware of the Yiddish literary response to racism in America? When Yiddish immigrants arrived en masse in this country more than a century ago, it was during the Jim Crow era -- a time of societal turmoil marked by racist violence against African Americans. Almost every Yiddish poet had something to say about the hatred they saw around them.

Dr. Merle Bachman was one of the first Yiddish scholars to publish about this phenomenon in her 2008 book of literary criticism, Recovering Yiddishland: Threshold Moments in American Literature

(Syracuse UP). Join her as she discusses the complex position of Yiddish writers who had arrived in a society where racism, not anti-Semitism, was the primary oppression, and how this is reflected in their poems: poetry that speaks to us today!

When: Friday, June 12th, 11 a.m. PDT, 2 p.m. EDT, 7 p.m. in London, 8 p.m. in Europe, 9 p.m. in Israel

Cost: This event is free of charge but if you consider donating to us at https://www.paypal.me/YAAANA2020 (with a note "black lives matter"), all the proceeds will be forwarded to our local Project Ujima. You might also consider donating to them directly: https://www.sandiegounified.org/project-ujima

Registration: Please RSVP to info@yaaana.com for access to the Zoom link. For security reasons, all guests must be registered.

About the speaker:

Dr. Merle Lyn Bachman is a poet, writer of CNF and recently retired

Professor of English. In addition to Recovering Yiddishland, she has published two full-length collections of poetry with the British press, Shearsman Books, as well as co-edited the 2018 Nameless Country, selected poems of the Scottish-Jewish poet, A. C. Jacobs (published by the British press, Carcanet). In 2015, Bachman was a Translation Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center.