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Archive: May 2020 (8 Posts)

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The House I Live In: Philip Roth’s America

Posted by: Anne Holmes

For Jewish American Heritage Month, Manuscript Division curator Barbara Bair explores Philip Roth’s novel "The Plot Against America" (and its recent television adaptation). Set between 1940 and 1942, when Roth himself was a child, the novel examines the status of being Jewish and being American in a particularly perilous time period in American and world history.

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Thoughts in the Time of Pandemic: Walt Whitman at Memorial Day

Posted by: Anne Holmes

May is the month of Walt Whitman’s birth and also of Memorial Day, when the nation is asked to pause and delve mindfully into remembrance of past wars and service and sacrifices rendered. Library of Congress Manuscript Division curator Barbara Bair explores Whitman's experiences and remembrances of war, isolation, suffering, and a turn to art in times of crisis—and how these themes connect to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

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Sholem Aleichem, The Yiddish Mark Twain

Posted by: Peter Armenti

For Jewish American Heritage Month, a guest post by research specialist Susan Garfinkel explores the legacy of author Sholem Aleichem, sometimes called "the Yiddish Mark Twain," whose stories of Tevye the dairyman inspired Fiddler on the Roof. Drawing on items from the Library's collections, including newspapers, playscripts, poems, and recordings, she looks at Aleichem's time in America, and delves into the question of whether the two famous humorists ever met.