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An acclaimed writer on her mother’s tumultuous life as a Jewish immigrant in 1930s New York and her life-long guilt when the Holocaust claims the family she left behind in Latvia
A story of love, war, and life as a Jewish immigrant in the squalid factories and lively dance halls of New York’s Garment District in the 1930s, My Mother’s Wars is the memoir Lillian Faderman’s mother was never able to write. The daughter delves into her mother’s past to tell the story of a Latvian girl who left her village for America with dreams of a life on the stage and encountered the realities of her new world: the battles she was forced to fight as a woman, an immigrant worker, and a Jew with family left behind in Hitler’s deadly path.
The story begins in 1914: Mary, the girl who will become Lillian Faderman’s mother, just seventeen and swept up with vague ambitions to be a dancer, travels alone to America, where her half-sister in Brooklyn takes her in. She finds a job in the garment industry and a shop friend who teaches her the thrills of dance halls and the cheap amusements open to working-class girls. This dazzling life leaves Mary distracted and her half-sister and brother-in-law scandalized that she has become a “good-time gal.” They kick her out of their home, an event with consequences Mary will regret for the rest of her life.
Eighteen years later, still barely scraping by as a garment worker and unmarried at thirty-five, Mary falls madly in love and has a torrid romance with a man who will never marry her, but who will father Lillian Faderman before he disappears from their lives. America is in the midst of the Depression, Hitler is coming to power in Europe, and New York’s garment workers are just beginning to unionize. Mary makes tentative steps to join, despite her lover’s angry opposition. As National Socialism engulfs Europe, Mary realizes she must find a way to get her family out of Latvia, and she spends frenetic months chasing vague promises and false rumors of hope. Pregnant again, after having submitted to two wrenching back-room abortions, and still unmarried, Mary faces both single motherhood and the devastating possibility of losing her entire Eastern European family.
Drawing on family stories and documents, as well as her own tireless research, Lillian Faderman has reconstructed an engrossing and essential chapter in the history of women, of workers, of Jews, and of the Holocaust as immigrants experienced it from American shores.
- Sales Rank: #1323309 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-03-05
- Released on: 2013-03-05
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist
Drawing on the stories told to her when she was a girl, Faderman recontructs her mother’s life, devotions, and tragedies in early 1930s America in a memoiristic tale. At 17, Mary Lifton leaves her shtetl in Latvia for New York City, where she takes up residence with her half sister. It’s a short-lived arrangement, and Mary supports herself by working on and off in the garment industry. Eighteen years later, Mary, now 35 and never married, by chance meets the younger, charismatic Moishe, Faderman’s father. The two embark on a passionate, tumultuous affair that lasts for years as Mary participates in a labor-union uprising and has a romance with another man, and, while barely making ends meet, two unplanned pregnancies. An affecting undercurrent is Mary’s unending loyalty to her family left behind in Latvia. When the Nazi movement begins to gain ground in Eastern Europe, Mary’s affections for Moishe are outweighed by her harrowing desperation to save her family. As Faderman vividly chronicles her mother’s intense personality and complex experiences, she also freshly illuminates the Jewish immigrant experience. --Leah Strauss
Review
"This is an exquisite piece of history—both resonantly personal and full of revelatory moments in the history of women, and of New York in the early days of the garment workers union and the shadow of the Holocaust. The sympathy and understanding Faderman shows for her immigrant mother, and her whole family, reminded me again of what I love about memoir. This is not just a story; these are lives on the page." —Dorothy Allison
“Faderman’s story of her immigrant mother is so vividly imagined that you can taste the borscht Mary eats, squirm at the claustrophobia of her tiny rented room, and be swept up in the sensual delight that will betray her.” —Janice Steinberg, author of The Tin Horse
“This book is a work of originality, written with such imaginative sympathy that I read it with unabating pleasure from beginning to end.” —Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments
“Lillian Faderman is an extraordinary storyteller, one of the few who can tell a painful story with a complex ending—and imbue it with humor, sensuality, and earthy grace, in every sentence.” —Amy Bloom, author of Away
“The sympathy and understanding Faderman shows for her immigrant mother and her whole family reminded me again of what I love about memoir. This is not just a story; these are lives on the page.” —Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
“My Mother’s Wars tells the aching story of immigrant factory workers in the decades preceding World War II—sad lives made sadder by the terrifying knowledge that their families in Europe are being extinguished. The book is part memoir, part reconstruction . . . and all artistry.” —Edith Pearlman, author of Binocular Vision
“Faderman is a skilled storyteller and a careful documentarian . . . the historical details in the book have been provided by extensive research. It is these historical details and Faderman’s lyrical storytelling skill that make this book such an inviting read.” —Carol Poll, Jewish Book Council
“A remarkable work of reconstruction . . . As usual, Faderman’s seemingly effortless prose is the result of years of patient research. As far as possible, she has made sure that the past will be accurately remembered.” —The Gay & Lesbian Review
“To be sure, the Holocaust figures crucially in [Lillian Faderman’s] new memoir . . . but her book is more than a testimony of the Holocaust— it is a love story, a family memoir and, above all, an American tale.” —Jonathan Kirsch, The Jewish Journal
“[A] strikingly intelligent and emotionally wrenching narrative.” —Philip Jason, The Washington Independent Review of Books
“A gripping personal testimony. Author Lillian Faderman shares her mother's story of immigrating to America with high hopes of dancing, only to be swept up in the undercurrents of New York, and the struggles of being a worker in the garment industry. . . . A must for history and memoir collections focusing on personal tales.” —Midwest Book Review
“Faderman expertly explores a jarring view into the immigrant life of Jewish Holocaust survivors living in the US.” —Nick Pachelli, The Advocate
“As Faderman vividly chronicles her mother’s intense personality and complex experiences, she also freshly illuminates the Jewish immigrant experience.” —Booklist
“Faderman commands her material in this page-turner—no small feat with a subject so close to home.” —Make/shift
About the Author
Lillian Faderman is the author of such acclaimed works as To Believe in Women, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, and Surpassing the Love of Men. Among the many honors her work has received are the Yale University James Brudner Award for Exemplary Scholarship in Lesbian/Gay Studies, three Lambda Literary Awards, and the Paul Monette Award. She teaches literature and creative writing at California State University at Fresno.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Gripping, heartbreaking, and so well written
By A reader
This is one of the most powerful books I have read in a long time. Lillian Fadermann tells the fascinating story of her mother's life in two intertwined stories: first, the story of her very long, painful love affair, and second, her grappling with the depression, the events leading up to World War II, and the horrifying threat of the Holocaust, particularly to her extended family back in Latvia. The author weighs in here and there about her mother's less fortunate decisions ("oh, Mama, Mama...") with such beauty and tenderness. I was glued to this book, and it lingers in my mind, days later.
I was so impressed with the author's ability to be intimate and warm, to recount horrifying events with such simplicity and clarity, and to build suspense that draws us in like a magnet, even we all know what the devastating outcomes are going to be. She begins each chapter with a few historical facts that tell much about the times, the attitudes of people, and events to come.The book teaches so much about life in the sweatshops, worldwide anti-Semitism, the desperate situation of the Jews, the attitudes toward single women,and so many hideous world situations beyond anyone's control. I had to close the book several times to catch my breath, wipe away tears, and just take in the enormity of it all.
In every way, the book is remarkably effective, profoundly disturbing, and very much worth reading. Most highly recommended to anyone interested in history, the crazy paradoxes of human nature, and outstanding storytelling, and to anyone who was ever a struggling young girl (or boy) foolishly in love for the first time.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
"May you live in interesting times"
By kiki
There is an old saying "May you live in interesting times". This can be understood as a blessing or a curse. Lillian Faderman's mother lived both meanings of it.
Escaping from the poverty of a Latvian shtetl in 1914, she finds herself working long hours, six days a week, doing piecework in a garment factory in New York. Mareleh Luft struggles to learn English and changes her name to Mary Lifton to "Americanize" herself. When she left Latvia at 17, she promised her younger brother she would send for him, but saving enough money for his passage to New York is difficult.
Mary participates in organizing strikes of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. This also makes her aware of the political situation worldwide. She sees the rise of the Nazi party and becomes frantic to get her family out of Latvia.
I absolutely couldn't put this book down. Ms.Faderman has honored her extended family by preserving their fascinating lives in this book. I got so invested in all of the people in this book, except for Morris, the user, of course. I highly recommend "My Mother's Wars" by Lillian Faderman.
Full Disclosure:
I received a copy of this book from Beacon Press through Goodreads.
It did not affect my review.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
As a former New Yorker
By BookAce
whose family lived in New York City since the 1920's, and as one who lived in the Bronx in the 40's and 50's and knew quite well, some of the folks who had been in concentration camps, this book spoke to my heart, my memory and my emotions. I understood also, the ghettos, the tenements - sometimes-miserable living quarters thereof, and the thronging grimy streets whose glittering counterparts were the night life of a living breathing city of immigrants, many of them trying to save a buck to bring a beloved family member across the ocean.
Who knew, back then before all mayhem and murder broke loose, what Hitler (or Mussolini) would be capable of doing? Mary (Mereleh) Lifton did not, until it was too late. My own grandparents in their complacency perhaps, stayed on in Italy until it was almost too late -- they lost all their money and their home, fleeing Mussolini with their children in 1931. Italy was not spared. Poland, Russia, England were not spared. And even Latvia was not spared. But who could see all this coming? Some did, a very few, it seems, until it was too late to do anything to save lives.
And who knew what life-saving feats one "ugly" man would be capable of doing for the woman he dearly loved, but who did not love him back? - Could Dominick have helped Mary realize this dream, this farewell-to-my-family promise of hers? We will never know. I remember my mother telling me about "arranged" marriages where "ugly" men turned out to be loving caring providers for their families, although the women they married did not love them back. How sad. It seemed that Stella was the lucky one here, although Mary could never understand why she would marry such an uncomely man who was actually an angel in disguise ("go out with your friend -- I'll take the kids to the zoo").
Mary Lifton comes to the shores of NY in the early 1900's as a young woman, with dreams of becoming a dancer on the Yiddish stage. Staying with relatives, half-sister Sarah and brother-in-law Sam, she realizes only the drab tiring actuality of being a six-day-a-week piece worker in a Brooklyn garment factory. Her wages are miserable, her life dictated by the man of the house, and her dreams - well her dreams, no longer that of becoming a dancer, are sometimes of her little brother Hirschel, her beloved brother, who appears to her in anguished dreams. Is this a foretaste of the future?
Mary never becomes a dancer -- the only dancing she does at first is in the company of Goldie -- dear Goldie -- a brash gum-snapping garment worker who wants the best in life, can do it on a shoestring budget, and takes Mary with her for a whirlwind ride through the night life of the gas-lit streets (the same ones as portrayed by such artists as John Sloan and the Ashcan School) of New York City. Goldie -- Dear Goldie -- I mourned you. My Nonna Lucia almost met the same fate -- I would not be here if that had happened to her. Mary almost met the same fate -- and in doing so was propelled into a harder-scrabble existence than the one she had before.
But Mary meets a man -- she is entranced by this man Moishe, who is half gangster and half lover. Her life is swept away because of him -- everything she does is for him -- she loses sight of anything else, and perhaps because of that her family on the other side of the ocean suffer?? No one is sent for - Mary does not have the money. Dominick did but she does not love Dominick. And Moishe? Well, Moishe is not what he seems. Mary does not see that.
There is an angel here -- in the form of Ray -- Mary's sister who DID come over to the US - Ray is a tough no nonsense woman with "flat-footed sanity" that Mary can lean on, a shoulder to cry on, a voice of reason that Mary does not always listen to -- perhaps Ray is a woman-oriented-woman, as she spends her time with her female friends and cuts her own swath through life, without needing a man to buoy her or her emotions up. There is another angel--Ricki- a friend and neighbor, who is there when Mary is at a very low place in her life
Meanwhile the trauma and terror overseas continues to escalate - Mary's dreams of Hirschel are more terrifying than ever. Where is Moishe? What happens to Dominick? What sadness is contained in the letters Mary receives! Letters, not only from Hirschel, but her mother, "di mameh" -- but from the White House.
Was Mary guilty of what happened to her loved ones ? Could she have acted earlier? Knowing what we do now of that part of history, it is very hard to know, and impossible to judge. Mary and Ray do their utmost best to deliver their loved ones from the killing machines overseas, only to meet with great frustration in every agency they rush to - every government agent they plead with - there is this `quota" and because of it, loved ones overseas will die....horribly.
Lillian Faderman brings such life to her words. How can one not feel the pain, the grime, the bone-wracking exhaustion, the fear, the hopes, the anguish that attend not only Mary, but those living in that era, working their fingers to the bone, and coming home to a small dingy apartment with a murphy bed and a sometimes- surly landlord/lady. But there are joys there as well--the days at Coney Island, the night life, friends who care deeply, and... "butterfly wings" a beautiful way of announcing Lillian's entrance into this world.
"My Mother's Wars" also deals not only with back-alley abortions, but with the almost-unheard of acceptance of an unwed woman's pregnancy - gifts and good wishes pour in from the very ones that Mary fears will turn against her. There is beauty in this grimy sometimes-tragic world after all.
"My Mother's Wars" helped me in some way deal with my own mother's wars - Sis and I were the only ones she confided in -- her personal problems and deeply expressed emotions were a very heavy burden for two little girls, especially as toddlers. We had our Nonna Lucia to lean on and be nurtured and loved by -- Lillian had her beloved Ray.
"My Mother's Wars" is a book that as it is read, is deeply felt - lives are played out in front of the reader, lives lost in many different ways, as is love lost, love yearning, love dying. I hope Mary found peace. I grieve for Dominick--I can only hope he found someone who truly loved him back. I applaud Lillian and Ray for being the strong women who held a burden of their family on their backs and walked through it all with love in their hearts and their shoulders unbent.
BTW -- I love the cover design -- a graceful woman whirls and dances - happiness, music, joyful abandon are evoked in this photo -- yet it mirrors the whirlwind that will soon descend on Eastern Europe as well as the whirlwind of thoughts and fears that Mary and Ray will soon traverse as they desperately try to rescue their loved ones from the vortex of evil.
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