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In the Neighborhood of True
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2021/6 Discussion for Susan Kaplan Carlton's In the Neighborhood of True--MOD'S CHOICE
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May 28, 2021 03:57PM
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I finished reading this book a few days ago. Even though the story takes place in the late 1950s, much of the early description is what I experienced when I moved to the South in the mid-1980s. I will comment further after others have had an opportunity to add their thoughts.
I enjoyed the book, even though it was meant for young adults. It was a good easy read which I need right now. It can be seen as a coming of age book for Ruth, the main character. What young person hasn’t felt the great need to fit in, whether due to religion, being skinny, being perfect, whatever. Girls trying to squeeze themselves Into a personal ity shape to be popular. I can feel and identify with her dilemma. While it does take place in the 1950s unfortunately, the politics and the events seem current to today, I enjoyed the depiction of the southern ways - the coming out parties, the elite family lines, who is part of the in-crowd. Not sure if they were stereotyped or real for that time. No spoiler alert, I won’t tell the ending.
I finished this book a few days ago and found it interesting. It seems lately I have been reading a lot of books about Passing, The Vanishing Half, Color Me In and now this one. I felt Susan Kaplan Carlton told a great story of Ruth the struggle she had of wanting to fit into a society without letting anyone know she was Jewish. The backdrop of the actual Atlanta Synagogue bombing gave the story a very historical feel and more meaning. The author does a good job in developing the character of Ruth, coping with the loss of her father, trying to adjust to new life and culture, so much different than what she experienced in New York and dealing with the first great love in her life.
Mod
Hi, Jonathan -- great to hear from you. It's been a while, hasn't it? My issue w/In the Neighborhood of True was that some of the history was off -- I'm dating myself now -- I was a child in Atlanta at that time. The theme of covering up Jewish identity was a great one, though.
You bring up passing & today that somehow reminded me of a book on the Jewish Book Club shelf from way back that was about the opposite: passing as a Jew -- not for some nefarious reason of claiming Holocaust victimhood, either. Songs for the Butcher's Daughter. I remember that one fondly. 😊
Hi Jan,Hope you are doing well..
Yes a long time.... I have been following a lot of the conversations, Antisemitism, Holocaust and find them really thought provoking.
I actually thought about you while reading this book, knowing that you were from the South and would know this time period well. I am sure a lot of this hit home for you. I will look into Songs for the Butcher. It sounds very interesting. Thanks for the information on that.
Mod
Glad you have been following along!
My reaction to the book is complicated by the fact of being both a southerner and a Jew. So even though most readers here resonated to the author's approach, I found a scenario based on stereotypes about the south annoying. Plus parts of the picture are just off kilter. Whereas according to Gone with the Wind, it was the so-called southern aristocrats that were hot to start the rebellion, those were not the perpetrators of the 1958 bombing, who were more like the types we saw in the Jan. 6 insurrection. --although no one was ever convicted, despite two trials! I certainly understand this book is fiction but that is not an excuse to distort things and fish for predictable responses, not given that the plot is set among the historical happenings.
I have liked books when people who live where the book is set don't, because the author got it wrong. Now I'm the one in that position!
Thanks Jan for the added insight. It definitely gives me a different perspective to look at.
Mod
I'm starting this tonight! Give me a day or two....
Mod
Amy- take all the time you need.
I enjoyed the book-
I will comment when you finish it.
Can I tell you how much I enjoyed this beautiful read? This was one of the monthly suggestions for the Jewish Book Club, and it really packs a punch. The premise is original, and it was done extremely well. An emerging Jewish teen in the 1950's, following the death of her beloved father, moves with her family to the heart of the South, to live with her mother's family. Her mother had converted years earlier, when she left the Southern life to become a reporter in the North. When Ruth arrives in the South, she gets caught up in the Pre-debutante balls, the Magnolia, the Chrysanthemum, etc, fulfilling the promise of her grandmother who has built up legacy and ancestry. And naturally, she is falling in love with a boy. But of course Ruth is caught. Grieving, and growing as a teen, she is caught between watching how Blacks and Jews are seen, treated, and endangered, and she gets as involved with the activism of the Atlanta Temple and the need for change, as she does with the Debutante Scene. Ruth, and others, are left "Somewhere in the Neighborhood of True." Ruth, has to eventually come to figure out her own truths, and take the courage to live them. It was extremely well done and beautifully written.On another note, I remain confused about what gets classified as YA. Is it simply because the main character is a teenager coming of age, that the classification is given? I try to ignore that, because YA to me feels like there are times when it's no different from what I generally read across the board (as it is in this case), and when it's truly meant for a teen audience. Sometimes I think the classification is misleading. In the Neighborhood of True has a teen protagonist, but the book is meant for a wider audience.
Jonathan, I appreciated your thoughts about passing. I too have read Passing and the Vanishing Half, but I wasn't as much thinking about that aspect here. Jews (and Gays) have often to always had the privilege of passing that ethnic races have not. Which is one of the reasons this book was so interesting. Ruth really did have the privilege of experiencing two worlds and trying to see where she fit between them. I thought it was beautifully done.I am always one, that never puts too much stock into whether something was historically accurate or not. That never seems to get my goat. A good story can sweep one away. That said, your perspective Jan, would be invaluable to hear. What was it like to grow up Jewish in the South?
Mod
Amy- I read this book earlier, asking Jan back in May if she could validate a few experiences Rachel spoke about in the book. One pertained to the KKK and fires Rachel saw in the back round of where she was at the time.
I couldn't find that post anywhere- which was because I just saw
it went to her via PM.
Must have been because it was too soon for me to take a chance writing a spoiler.
I, as Jonathan and yourself, was also thinking of Jan while reading the book.
When she sees your post, she will respond, but in the meantime, scroll above and see some of her thoughts.
Mod
Here's my review; don't believe I posted it here previously.
As to passing, Amy, you'll have to speak for yourself on that. I didn't know I was passing; nobody explained I was different, nobody talked about it. I really wasn't so much passing as stone-walling as though I belonged here. I really didn't know any better; in fact, the only person I was fooling was myself because I looked out and saw other people and assumed I was one of them, but other people were looking at me.
It was like this:
"I live in Atlanta, but I think what you meant is where am I from originally."
--Liana Finck, in the Nov. 2, 2015 issue of The New Yorker
So in other words, my appearance was ambiguous.
So often it's skin color, yes, but not as much as we think. It's hair. It's the way we talk. Remember those experiments with women with white skin but wearing a hijab?
No one would ask if I were Jewish, much less if I was mixed-race. They would go, "Are you Italian?" That's what I'd always be asked.
Then, when I was a teenager people would tell me I "looked like Loretta Young." Just checked and she's of Luxembourgish descent. 😆
Read or listen to Trevor Noah's Born a Crime. He's very good on identity and how related it is to how we talk.
Nowadays people hear me talk, and then I'm "white." But it's so much more diverse now than in the late '50s-early '60s.
What I wonder is whether a Jewish teenager from New York would have had that much sense of herself circa 1958 and be able to discuss identity with her mother and sister. I was living in a practically Jew-free suburb and with no extended family, and I certainly didn't.
Yes in the '70s, '80s and '90s, I'm guessing. Am I right? Would love to hear the experiences of others!
Mod
However, there is this.
The fact is there are just not enough ancestors to go around, so that we all tend to be somewhat mixed.
I think it was clear that you meant if you didn't overtly demonstrate that you were Jewish, people around you assumed you were gentile.Not that you deliberately "passed" but that that was the default status. I lived in Atlanta for a period and the first question people asked me when I first met them was what church did I go to.Actually I witnessed that exact question being posed to my future daughter in law in Brooklyn, NY! She mentioned their synagogue and that ended that interaction.
Mod
Hi, Shelley. When did you live in Atlanta?
Yes, what you said is captured in this quote from Songs for the Butcher's Daughter. I know you've been a member all along; did you get to that one? One of the best! If I'm not mistaken it won book of the year from the Jewish Book Council at some point.
“Learning to pass, it turns out, is less a matter of acting than not acting. You can become part of a given scene, situation, or people ('our people,' as it were), simply by letting yourself serve as a mirror for those around you. When I was still in college, when I still thought I might make a good priest, I spent some time in a Trappist monastery. I found that by exerting as little of my own personality as possible, I was able to fit right in. The monks in no time came to call me brother, believing I was destined to make vows as one of their own. Passing begins with the assumptions of those around you. The best thing you can do to maintain the illusion is to come as close as possible to doing nothing at all.”
― Peter Manseau, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter
If somebody in the majority assumes everybody is the same as they are, then "what church do you go to?" is a good conversation opener. In the professional class, though, you wouldn't be so likely hear that question nowadays, with the current emphasis on diversity. But your daughter's ploy used to work very well with the door-to-door evangelists.
And now I'm thinking of another cartoon -- the one where the missionaries are at the door asking "Have you found Jesus?" and from the interior you view only the sandaled feet poking out from behind the curtain...
I lived in Atlanta twice when my late husband was a visiting law professor at Emory. I actually loved it. once in the early 80's and again in the late 80s-90.I haven't read that but will put it on my list.
Mod
I haven't read that but will put it on..."
I live very near there now!
During those years we were raising our children. Kept me out of trouble for the most part.
Mod
"In the Neighborhood of True" was written as Y/A book, yet it seemed to capture readers of all ages.
We forget sometimes works of fiction allow for creative license and interpretation, as I did with the issue of fire and smoke. Growing up in the Midwest, I experienced many of same issues as Rachel, but the events were different; not being customary as shown through living in the South. But the bottom line was the same. Unfortunately, my voice and confidence appeared later, too late for those who said I can't join, or I wasn't invited -why? Even to call out a closet antisemite who wouldn't hire me over someone less qualified.
If it was rejection and fear; it happened. My first year in college a boyfriend simply disappeared when he found out I was jewish. Funny- I thought he was jewish...
Which brings me to the end point of this post.
///
There is a difference between Rachel's story of "Passing" and Jewish Identity-
What is it that we identify with and through- to "personally" feell our own unique connection -if at all, with Jewishness?
The HIGH HOLIDAY'S this year fall right on the outside of Labor Day. So early .
The genre for September is "Jewish Identity".
Jan and I have been vetting books for examples, many have been short stories from 60-90 pages.
In recognizing this may be a delicate subject for some, posting this in advance offers more time to give thought of books.
In pursuit to get deep into 'the core", excluded from this genre is anti-semitism, and pluralism coupled with "who is a jew" issue.
With humility, we ask to please not post any nominations or recommendations at this time, as we are not finished.
Jan will elaborate shortly in the "Monthly Update".
Thank you.
Mod
You can say that again, Stacey.
I feel I owe Amy an apology for my impassioned but undiplomatic comment above ("...speak for yourself").
Amy, your terminology has stimulated a lot more thinking, which I appreciate.
Mod
What about books that treat Jews wrong? Even if it's a good story?
