{"product_id":"emma-lazarus-isbn-9780805211665","title":"Emma Lazarus","description":"\u003cb\u003eWinner of the National Jewish Book Award\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eEmma Lazarus’s most famous poem gave a voice to the Statue of Liberty, but her remarkable story has remained a mystery until now. Drawing upon a cache of personal letters undiscovered until the 1980s, Esther Schor brings this vital woman to life in all her complexity—as a feminist, a Zionist, and a trailblazing Jewish-American writer. Schor argues persuasively for Lazarus’s place in history as an activist and a prophet of the world we all inhabit today. As a stunning rebuke to fear, xenophobia, and isolationism, Lazarus's life and work are more relevant now than ever before.\u003ci\u003ePrologue: Emma Lazarus and the Three Anne Franks ix \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eI · 1849–1876\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGenerations 3 \u003cbr\u003eThe Shadow of Victory 11 \u003cbr\u003eFootsteps in Newport 15 \u003cbr\u003eYour Professor, My Poet 20 \u003cbr\u003eAdmetus 34 \u003cbr\u003eOldport 36 \u003cbr\u003eA Place in Parnassus 43 \u003cbr\u003eThoreau’s Compass 51 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eI I · 1876–1881 \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the Studio 57 \u003cbr\u003eThe Woman as She Really Was 65 \u003cbr\u003eConundrums 72\u003cbr\u003eAwakening 79 \u003cbr\u003eAn Ancient, Well-Remembered Pain 86 \u003cbr\u003eThe Critic’s Only Duty 90 \u003cbr\u003eThe Devil Discovered 95 \u003cbr\u003eFresh Vitality in Every Direction 106 \u003cbr\u003eProgress and Poverty 114 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eI I I · 1882–1883 \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRussian Jewish Horrors 119 \u003cbr\u003eShylocks and Spinozas 128 \u003cbr\u003eThe List of Singers 133 \u003cbr\u003eA Single Thought \u0026amp; a Single Work 136 \u003cbr\u003eAn Army of Jewish Paupers 142 \u003cbr\u003eThe Semite and the Hebrews 150 \u003cbr\u003eThe Poet of the Podolian Ghetto 166 \u003cbr\u003eSeeds Sown 169 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eI V · 1883–1887 \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Other Half (as It Were) of Our Little World-Ball 175 \u003cbr\u003eMother of Exiles 185 \u003cbr\u003eRevolution as the Only Hope 198 \u003cbr\u003eThe Inward Dissonance 209 \u003cbr\u003eThe Vacant Chair 213 \u003cbr\u003ePassing Phantoms 216 \u003cbr\u003eDecember Roses 223 \u003cbr\u003eThe Mattress-Grave 234 \u003cbr\u003eSibyl Judaica 239 \u003cbr\u003eBut If She Herself Were Here Today... 245 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAppendix: Texts of the Poems 261 \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eChronology 299 \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eNotes 309 \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSources 323 \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAcknowledgments 329 \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eIndex 333\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Emma Lazarus’s ‘passionate, ardent life’ is laid out sumptuously in Esther Schor’s evocative biography. It is unlikely that, for a general audience, it will be surpassed any time in the near future.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Commentary\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A sympathetic and balanced life of Emma Lazarus.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “How welcome Lazarus would be in the company of today’s poets. How fine to have a writer of Schor’s quality restore this courageous and important poet to her rightful place.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The New York Sun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Schor brings to life the complicated, passionate woman who left us our proudest  national image.  A work of great empathy an meticulous historical research.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e–Kevin  Baker, author of \u003ci\u003eParadise Alley\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In this luminous, enthralling biography, Schor recovers one of the outstanding women of nineteenth-century letters, who while  inventing her life as an American Jewish writer discovered a larger poetic mission  for the entire nation.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e-Sean Wilentz, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Rise of American Democracy:  Jefferson to Lincoln\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Schor, herself a poet of authentic distinction, has  composed a very moving and highly useful biographical critique of Emma Lazarus, a  permanent poet in American and in Jewish tradition.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e–Harold Bloom, author of \u003ci\u003eThe  Western Canon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“It is a rare book indeed that so  skillfully melds biography, literary analysis, and cultural history.  In describing  Emma Lazarus and her circle, Schor tells the story of American Jewry in the nineteenth  century, paints a portrait of literary New York in one of its heydays, explicates  many beautiful and long-neglected poems, and instills in us a canny affection for  a subject who is forceful and sometimes overbearing but also brilliant and compassionate.   Schor’s prose is as lyrical and rich in images as the poetry she describes in this  intimate, often touching volume.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e–Andrew Solomon, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Noonday Demon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eESTHER SCHOR,\u003c\/b\u003e a poet and professor of English at Princeton University, is the author of \u003ci\u003eBridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language, Strange Nursery: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e My Last JDate, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eBearing the Dead: The British Culture of Mourning from the Enlightenment to Victoria.\u003c\/i\u003e Her essays and reviews have appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe Times Literary Supplement,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review, The New Republic,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Forward.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePROLOGUE \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eEmma Lazarus and the Three Anne Franks \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNot long ago, on a humid May morning, I visited my daughter’s fourth-grade class. We parents gathered on the blacktop behind the school, where, amid a mad, high buzz of cicadas, the children stood in stiff poses, hot in their costumes, for the Annual Wax Museum. Here was Jackie Robinson, played by a white boy with freckles, and there was Lady Diana Spencer, played by a tall black girl in a foil tiara; perched on the jungle gym, a recent arrival from Pakistan wore Eleanor Roosevelt’s unmistakable blue felt hat and wallflower dress. When I touched his hand—the cue to begin his autobiography—a stout black boy, as Malcolm X, told of marrying “Betty X” before being shot in Harlem; “El Duque,” played by the daughter of a Guatemalan gardener, recalled his passage through shark-infested waters. This year’s theme had been announced as “Women and Minorities,” though after an appeal from the mom of a would-be Babe Ruth, the teachers broadened it to “People Who Made a Difference.” At the edge of the blacktop, a pigtailed Leonardo da Vinci gossiped in her Sydney accent with a tiny George Washington, coiffed in a poof of baby powder.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAs I wound my way among these sweaty monuments, Emma Lazarus’s famous sonnet, “The New Colossus,” was on my mind: \u003ci\u003eGive me your tired, your poor \/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.\u003c\/i\u003e Among these poor, tired kids, huddling in their Wax Museum tableaus, was the breathing proof of her prophecy—multicultural America, the “Mother of Exiles,” welcoming all in need of freedom. I had learned about the fortunes of this poem, how it had flared and faded from view in the 1880s, emerged fifteen years after Emma’s death on a plaque inside the Statue’s pedestal, and been resurrected in the 1930s by pro-immigrationists during an era of restrictive quotas. The poem had shaped America’s self-image, certainly, but not spontaneously, not continuously. Like many prophecies, it was well ahead of its time, and decades later it proved an exquisite tool for men and women trying to carve a new, inclusive destiny for America. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFinding no Emma Lazarus in the Wax Museum was not a surprise. But I was surprised to find that all the Jewish girls in the class (except my own pith-helmeted daughter, channeling Jane Goodall) had chosen to be Anne Frank. Each of the three Anne Franks had parted her hair on the right, clipped it on the left; each clutched a small book entitled Diary; each wore the white, Peter Pan collar of the girl who wouldn’t grow up. There were small variations—one was blond and curly, the daughter of Israelis; another had feline, green eyes; the third, giggly and nervous, consulted her diary frequently for what looked like prompts. Each kept a respectful distance from the others, as though it were hard enough to be Anne Frank without competing for the title. They’d clicked on the same website, each reciting solemnly, “I died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, but after my death my dream came true: I became a published author.” The eerie trio made me shudder, as much for Anne Frank’s death as for the grim Wax Museum heroine she had become. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eI was not much older than my daughter when my parents gave me Anne Frank’s \u003ci\u003eDiary of a Young Girl\u003c\/i\u003e for Chanukah, inscribed\u003ci\u003e, Here is a young girl we would like you to know\u003c\/i\u003e. As I came to know her, she became a heroine of mine, too, but for all the wrong reasons. She was proud and bad and furtive; she’d doted on her father, hated her mother, mocked the neighbors, and flirted, effectively, with a boy. Best of all, Anne was willing to tell me everything, and I adored her for it; I was her confidante—her “Kitty.” I loved Anne Frank neither for hoping nor dying but for being so shameless, so unlovable. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEmma Lazarus’s diary does not survive, and of her childhood until the age of fourteen, there are no traces at all. We know that she was at least a fourth-generation American, the scion of a wealthy Sephardic family in New York, but little else. Whether she was mischievous or aimed to please, we cannot know; whether she went to school, played the piano, memorized Shakespeare, became her father’s favorite, or went to synagogue, we can only surmise. We live on the dark side of her moon. For nearly a century following her death in 1887, the only hints of the passionate, ardent life she lived were a scattering of letters sent to her famous correspondents, a small cache of letters she received, and a maudlin memoir by her sister Josephine. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAll that changed on a Saturday afternoon in July 1980, when the retired theater critic Rosamond Gilder emptied the contents of a tall wooden cupboard into the arms of the scholar Bette Roth Young. It was a trove of one-hundred-odd letters sent by Emma Lazarus and her sisters to their friend Helena deKay Gilder, Rosamond’s late mother. Sublimely trusting, Gilder handed over three hundred frail sheets of paper, directing her visitor to the nearby Lenox, Massachusetts, post office to photocopy them. Many nickels and fifteen years later, these letters and others appeared in Young’s landmark volume, \u003ci\u003eEmma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters \u003c\/i\u003e(1995). \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIn her letters to her own “Kitty,” Emma Lazarus comes alive as never before. Alert and witty, scandalously smart, she devours the heady pleasures of the Gilded Age: music, theater, art, poetry, novels, politics, history. She acquires powerful mentors in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson and befriends the daughters of Emerson and Hawthorne. She engages blue bloods and mountain men; eccentricity brings out the best in her. She is a snob; she is a champion of the oppressed. With women, her attachments are ardent and sustained. With men, her friendships are more tenuous; she strives to balance friendship and intimacy, then impetuously tips the scales. She lives a vibrant writing life, taking up a myriad of genres—lyric poetry, blank-verse narrative, drama, translation, novel, short story, essay, polemic, even muckraking exposé—and writing the first prose poem to appear in English. Traveling abroad for the first time at thirty-three, she takes London by storm. By the time she returns to Europe two years later, she has braved the ordeal of a lifetime, defying both enemies of the Jews and Jews who championed their people but without her visionary realism. Adrift, depressed, cut off from the very sources of her power, she tries out the role of a Henry James heroine in foreign capitals until a fatal illness breaks her stride. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe same brio that makes her a joy can make her fearsome. Disappointed or betrayed, she does not shy from conflict, not with Ralph Waldo Emerson, not with genteel anti-Semites, not with the many Jews who mocked her vision of a Jewish state in Palestine. Angered, she is unsparing, her pen scathing. A woman of action; a secular, nationalist Jew; a spinster with a sharp eye for sexual innuendo, unafraid to face her own longings—in so many ways, she is more of our time than of her own. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHere, at last, is Emma Lazarus, a being, not a poem. \u003ci\u003eHere is a woman I would like you to know.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Schocken","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301209100517,"sku":"NP9780805211665","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780805211665.jpg?v=1767726215","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/emma-lazarus-isbn-9780805211665","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}