Set against the backdrop of a transformative summer, this coming-of-age novel explores the lives of campers at a Jewish sleepover camp. As they navigate friendships, personal growth, and the challenges of adolescence, the story intertwines humor with poignant moments, reflecting the social and political changes of the time. The characters grapple with their identities and relationships, making for a heartfelt exploration of youth and community amidst a shifting cultural landscape.
Exploring themes of Jewish identity and belonging, this collection weaves together seven and a half stories set in a fictional Reform synagogue in Thornhill, Toronto. Characters navigate the complexities of settler colonialism, love, and cannabis culture, often blending realism with surreal elements. The narratives feature a life-changing discovery in a synagogue basement, haunting visions of a third temple, and the interplay of Jewish traditions with contemporary issues. With humor and darkness, the stories reflect on history and the quest for better worlds.
The poems in Arguments for Lawn Chairs take multiple positions. The poems in Arguments for Lawn Chairs don't trust your grandmother's cooking. They have visited Pangea, they have visited Toronto and Montreal, the B.C. Gulf Islands, Tiberias, the tailing ponds near Sudbury, and they are still not satisfied, are still unconvinced, still need more proof. They are suckers for dovetailed boxes, winter fire pits, houses that sit not quite true, a rent garbage bag spilling its guts on Queen Street. The poems in Arguments for Lawn Chairs have some choice words for Orpheus, for Eurydice, for Beowulf, fro Dumbledore and Hermione. The poems in Arguments for Lawn Chairs are devoid of hope, but are joyful nonetheless.
"Leaving Other People Alone reads contemporary North American Jewish fiction about Israel/Palestine through an anti-Zionist, diasporic lens. Aaron Kreuter argues that since Jewish diasporic fiction played a major role in establishing the centroperipheral relationship between Israel and the diaspora, it therefore also has the potential to challenge, trouble, and ultimately rework this relationship. Kreuter suggests that any fictional work that concerns itself with Israel/Palestine and Zionism comes with heightened responsibilities, primarily to make narrative space for the Palestinian worldview, the dispossessed other of the Zionist project. In engaging prose, the book features a wide range of scholarship and new, compelling readings of texts by Theodor Herzl, Leon Uris, Philip Roth, Ayelet Tsabari, and David Bezmozgis. Throughout the book, Kreuter develops his concept of diasporic heteroglossia, which is fiction’s unique ability to contain multiple, diasporic voices that resist and write back against national centres. This work makes an important and original contribution to Jewish studies, diaspora studies, and world literatures."-- Provided by publisher
