Jennifer Gilmore
By Jennifer Gilmore
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Culture My Grandparents Thought They Were Leaving Us a Better World
I keep thinking of my maternal grandmother. She graduated from Wellesley in 1936, as did my paternal grandmother. Two Jewish women went to elite women’s colleges in the 1930s, my mom following in 1964. Both my aunts went there too. The first woman in my immediate family not to go to Wellesley, I broke the…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Lemonade
What got me most this year, (pre-election, it must be said) was Beyoncé’s “visual album,” “Lemonade,” which chronicles a deep betraying love but is also about everything: The history of the world, being a black women in America, fathers and daughters, performance, mothers and daughters, American cities and countries and towns, violence. Alchemy. Deep, unapologetic,…
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Culture Meet the Man Who Knows How To Make a Show Work on Broadway
Few people know more about Broadway theater than Jack Viertel does. He comes at the form from all angles: He is the senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway theaters, and he’s the artistic director of the Encores! series at City Center. He’s been a theater critic, has worked on…
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Culture What Was a Nice Jewish Girl Like Her Doing in a Church Like This?
At the border of the town where I grew up there is a circle that straddles Maryland and the District of Columbia and is ringed by a band of churches. Catholic, Protestant, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist. All are represented here, I remember being told many times. Many of the girls in my town wore the Catholic…
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Books Author Blog: What Is the Story?
Earlier this week, Jennifer Gilmore wrote about the overlap between her personal concerns and writerly concerns. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: “The Mothers” is the first book I’ve written that…
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Books Author Blog: Lost Stories
Jennifer Gilmore’s newest novel, “The Mothers,” is now available. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: “The Mothers” is my third novel but it’s the first novel I’ve written that tracks so…
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Culture Letting Go of Roth
One never knows why another human really does what he does. And as readers, we can’t ever really know why an author makes the decisions he does on the page. Authorial intent is somewhat sacred. All we can do as readers is speculate on the work as it sits, or sings, on the page. But…
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Books A.M. Homes’ Novel Addresses ’70s Childhood
When A.M. Homes and I sat down to lunch at Buvette, a packed cafe on Grove Street near her home in New York City’s West Village, to discuss her new novel, “May We Be Forgiven,” she referred to it as “a midlife coming-of-age novel.” That may make her book sound sweet or languorous, but it…
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