By Eric J. Sundquist
In a tradition deeply divided alongside ethnic strains, the concept the connection among blacks and Jews used to be suggestion special―indeed, severe to the reason for civil rights―might appear unusual. but the significance of blacks for Jews and Jews for blacks in conceiving of themselves as american citizens, while either remained outsiders to the privileges of complete citizenship, is an issue of voluminous yet complicated list. it truly is this checklist, written around the annals of yankee heritage and literature, tradition and society, that Eric Sundquist investigates. A enormous paintings of literary feedback and cultural background, Strangers within the Land attracts upon politics, sociology, legislations, faith, and pop culture to light up an essential, hugely conflicted interethnic partnership over the process a century.
Sundquist explores how reactions to numerous interlocking issues―the biblical Exodus, the Holocaust, Zionism, and the kingdom of Israel―became serious to black–Jewish family. He charts risky debates over social justice and liberalism, anti-Semitism and racism, via prolonged analyses of fiction by way of Bernard Malamud, Paule Marshall, Harper Lee, and William Melvin Kelley, in addition to the juxtaposition of authors akin to Saul Bellow and John A. Williams, Lori Segal and Anna Deavere Smith, Julius Lester and Philip Roth. enticing quite a lot of thinkers and writers on race, civil rights, the Holocaust, slavery, and comparable issues, and slicing throughout disciplines to set works of literature in ancient context, Strangers within the Land deals an encyclopedic account of questions valuable to fashionable American culture.
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