Beyond the Pale
by Elana Dykewomon
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Book Summary Information
Author: Elana DykewomonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-03-04
ISBN: 1551928787
Number of pages: 424
Reading Level: Young Adult
Publisher: Raincoast Books
Book Reviews of Beyond the Pale
Book Review: An extremely moving read
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a book that I could not put down. The story follows two immigrant women from Russia to America, where they quickly learn that they have left neither poverty nor struggle behind. The characters face so much hardship and tragedy in this story, and yet the darkness is far from oppressing, as one might find with other authors who have attempted a story such as this.
Yes, there is profound sadness in this book (the account of the Triangle fire is almost to hard to read), but there is also joy, understanding and an amazing sense of connection with the characters that will stay with the reader long after the book is finished.
Summary of Beyond the Pale
Beyond the Pale follows the lives of two women: Gutke Gurvich, who apprentices as a midwife in a Russian Jewish settlement before immigrating to New York and joining the suffrage and labor movements; and Chava Meyer, a Russian Jew whose birth is attended by Gutke.?A tour de force sequence involving the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is typical of this book's power. Both epic and intimate, the book takes readers deep inside diverse worlds, with harrowing and heroic stories of midwifery, the Russian pogroms, and early lesbian life.
Elana Dykewomon's Lambda Award-winning novel Beyond the Pale announces itself to the world with an infant's scream--"a new voice, a tiny shofar announcing its own first year." The midwife attending this birth is Gutke Gurvich, a half-Jew with different colored eyes and a gift for seeing into the spirit world. Beyond the Pale is Gutke's story, detailing her odyssey from a Russian shtetl to a comfortable Manhattan brownstone. But, as Dykewomon puts it, "Whenever you tell the story of one woman, inside is another," and this rich, multilayered novel is also the story of Chava Meyer, the baby girl Gutke delivered that day, as well as the story of the important women in both of their lives: mothers, sisters, neighbors, lovers, friends. After seeing her mother raped and killed during a particularly vicious progrom in her native village of Kishinev, Chava immigrates to America. There, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, both she and Gutke find themselves involved in the nascent labor union and suffrage movements. Dykewomon has clearly done her research here, and Beyond the Pale presents a beautifully detailed account of life among turn-of-the-century immigrant Jews, from classes at the Henry Street Settlement House to the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Through the lens of several lesbians' lives, Dykewomon draws a portrait of an entire Diasporan community living through the terror and uncertainties of both Russian progroms and life in the New World.
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