Jun. 1st, 2022

What I finished reading:

Yesterday: A Memoir of a Russian Jewish Family by Miriam Shomer Zunser with an afterword by Emily Wortis Leider, her granddaughter. It begins in Pinsk, Russia with Zunser's grandfather Reb Michel Bercinsky, a lawyer. Due to a false rumor that married men would not be conscripted into the army, he was married at 14 to 12 year old Yentel in 1834. They had 24 kids but only 9 lived to adulthood. Each of those 9 gets a chapter in the book. The author's mother was Dinneh, who "all the days of her long life bitterly resented the meagerness of her youthful education." She married Nochim-Mayer Shaikevitsch, the writer known as Shomer.

Miriam and her husband Charles Zunser are the grandparents of children's novelist Avi, Emily being his twin. That's how I heard of the book - I went down a rabbit hole that started when I saw that someone had made his father, a psychiatrist, a Wikipedia page. There is a family picture with them and their brother in the book.

What I'm reading next:

Cuckoo's Egg by C. J. Cherryh.

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