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Carol Ascher

Goodreads Author

Born

Cleveland, Ohio, The United States

Website

http://www.carolascher.net

Genre

Fiction, Memoir, Biography

Influences

Though my influences have changed over time, several women authors rem ...more

Member Since

July 2014

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I was born in Cleveland three weeks after my parents arrived as refugees from the Nazi regimes of Central Europe. Our home was bilingual, with German the language of nostalgia, frightening memories, as well as intimacy.

I grew up in Topeka, Kansas, straddling two very different worlds: the Midwestern Christian world of my public school and neighborhood, and the community of Jewish refugees who, like my father, had been hired as psychoanalysts by the Menninger Foundation, one of the early psychoanalytic clinics in America.

My novel, The Flood, describes a ten-year-old whose biographical information is similar to mine, as she comes to understand the nature of prejudice. The novel takes place in Topeka in 1951, the year the Kansas River overfle I was born in Cleveland three weeks after my parents arrived as refugees from the Nazi regimes of Central Europe. Our home was bilingual, with German the language of nostalgia, frightening memories, as well as intimacy.

I grew up in Topeka, Kansas, straddling two very different worlds: the Midwestern Christian world of my public school and neighborhood, and the community of Jewish refugees who, like my father, had been hired as psychoanalysts by the Menninger Foundation, one of the early psychoanalytic clinics in America.

My novel, The Flood, describes a ten-year-old whose biographical information is similar to mine, as she comes to understand the nature of prejudice. The novel takes place in Topeka in 1951, the year the Kansas River overflew, turning hundreds into refugees, and Reverend Oliver Brown sued the Topeka Board of Education, because his daughter had to travel across town to attend a segregated school.

I attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, for two years, and completed my BA at Barnard College. After taking off a few years to experience the life of a writer while taking a variety of jobs in New York City, I returned to Columbia, where I earned a doctorate in Anthropology and Education. I then spent several decades studying urban public schools, with most of my research directed at understanding issues of inequality and prejudice as they occur in public schools.

In the 1970s, sexual, reproductive and artistic issues in the Second Wave of feminism became the focus of my personal and public life. This led to two books, Simone deBeauvoir, a Life of Freedom, and a collection I edited with Sara Ruddick and Louise deSalvo, Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write about their Work on Women.

My refugee background has been a rich source on which I draw over and over in my writing. My memoir, Afterimages, focuses on how my parents' struggles to leave their homelands and make new lives for themselves in America, and describes my own journeys back to Germany and Austria to discover more about their pasts. This complicated background is also the xx of several personal essays, including The Dress, My Father's Violin, and, most recently, To Be Human in a Jewish Way, an essay about my aunt's experiences in the Jewish schools initiated by Martin Buber during the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany.

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Carol Ascher’s books

Average rating: 4.04 · 57 ratings · 18 reviews · 11 distinct works

	The Flood: A Novel 3.74 avg rating — 19 ratings — published 1987 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Call from Spooner Street 4.40 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 2015 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Solutions to Violence by Colman McCarthy (Editor), Edward Guinan, Peter Ackerman 4.83 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2002	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Call From Spooner Street 4.20 avg rating — 5 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Simone de Beauvoir, a Life of Freedom 3.50 avg rating — 6 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Chance for Land and Fresh Air 4.75 avg rating — 4 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write about Their Work on Women 3.75 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1984 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Afterimages: A Family Memoir 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2008 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hard Lessons: Public Schools and Privatization by Carol Ascher (Goodreads Author), Robert Berne, Norm Fruchter liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1996	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Simone de Beauvoir: A Life of Freedom 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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In Search of a Workable and Humane Immigration Policy

[image error]Photo by American Friends Service

President Trump hoped to swing the election in favor of Republicans with warnings of an invasion by caravans of Central American immigrants making their way north through Mexico. Though the photos made clear that these were young fathers, mothers and children in strollers, Trump spoke of the criminals and Muslim terrorists hidden among them, as well as

Carol is Currently Reading

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The Curious Magpie

by Hendon Chubb

bookshelves: currently-reading

read in June, 2015

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Carol Ascher said: " This charming dictionary should be by your bed or in the bathroom, or wherever you're likely to read one or two of its delightful pieces. Truth is slippery here, as Chubb is as likely to make things up when truth isn't sufficiently amusing. But there ...more "

Jun 28, 2015 11:19AM · see review