Description
Book Synopsis73rd National Jewish Book Awards FinalistA fascinating glimpse into the complex and often unexpected ways that women and ideas about women shaped widely read Jewish newspapersBetween the 1880s and 1920s, Yiddish-language newspapers rose from obscurity to become successful institutions integral to American Jewish life. During this period, Yiddish-speaking immigrants came to view newspapers as indispensable parts of their daily lives. For many Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, acclimating to America became inextricably intertwined with becoming a devoted reader of the Yiddish periodical press, as the newspapers and their staffs became a fusion of friends, religious and political authorities, tour guides, matchmakers, and social welfare agencies. In A Revolution in Type, Ayelet Brinn argues that women were central to the emergence of the Yiddish press as a powerful, influential force in American Jewish culture. Through rhetorical debates about women readers and writers, the produce
Trade ReviewOffers a compelling case for why a gendered history of American Yiddish newspapers is necessary to understand both their development as well as their success as the most important non-English press in the United States. The first of its kind, this is a thoroughly researched, clearly-written book. -- Anita Norich, author of Writing in Tongues: Translating Yiddish in the Twentieth Century
Striking and impressively executed, Brinn demonstrates in highly specific detail the ways in which ideas about women and women’s labor—if often misogynist ideas and exploited labor—were central in the development of the American Yiddish press. . . . Will absolutely transform the way that scholars think about and teach the history of Yiddish journalism in the US and also the history of American journalism, writ large. -- Josh Lambert, Sophia Moses Robison Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and English, Wellesley College
