A Powerful First Book Of Poetry from Ruth Mandel,
Child of A Survivor And A Strong Female Voice
From The “Second Generation”
Published Fall 2003 by McGilligan Books (Toronto)
“Every poem catches the imagination with its varied, powerful imagery. Each one can be read and absorbed on its own, or as part of the evolving whole.”
Child of A Survivor And A Strong Female Voice
From The “Second Generation”
Published Fall 2003 by McGilligan Books (Toronto)
“Every poem catches the imagination with its varied, powerful imagery. Each one can be read and absorbed on its own, or as part of the evolving whole.”
- Sir Martin Gilbert, Introduction,
How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust
How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust
That question, pointed and pressing, brought only the same silence Ruth had heard for the past 26 years -- 26 years of wondering: Is there a right way to ask such a question? And how can it ever be answered?
Thirteen years later, those questions have grown into a striking and beautiful book of poetry, How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust. Published this fall by McGilligan Books, an emerging Toronto small press, the poems are complemented by a selection of period and contemporary documents and photographs.How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust is a narrative exploration of Ruth’s father’s childhood experience of life in Poland during the Nazi era and his adult experience as a survivor living in Canada, married to a first-generation Canadian Jew and father to three Canadian-born children.
The poems vary widely in tone and setting, as Ruth pieces together her own understanding of the Holocaust as the child of a survivor and as a parent and social activist herself.
Poems from the book have been included in various literary journals, anthologies and textbooks over the past decade, most notably by Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill.
Sir Martin was so struck by her poetry that he included one of them in his book Never Again, A History Of The Holocaust and wrote the introduction to How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust.
In that introduction, Sir Martin writes, “Ruth Mandel’s poems seem to me to have particular resonance not only for survivors, but also for those who, like myself, have no personal Holocaust experience or survivor parents or grandparents.
“People of all ages will find this book both enlightening and disturbing,” he continues, “It is as much addressed to the adults who feel that they must tell their children about the Holocaust as to those children themselves.”
How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust reaches out to all – young and old, Jews and non-Jews – and gives voice to the silent questions and answers of all who share the aftermath.
How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust will be available in bookstores across Canada in late November.
How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust can also be ordered from McGilligan Books -- E-mail: mcgilliganbooks@sympatico.ca /Tel 416.538.0945.
Ann Decter is the publisher at McGilligan Books, an emerging Toronto publishing house for fiction and poetry, bringing new voices and new perspectives to public attention. McGilligan Books’ list features feminist writers and explores the multiracial and multicultural reality of Canadian writers and society.
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Davidson Communications,
Angela Vink, Ellen Davidson, Kaya Quill
Tel: 416.960.8625 Fax: 416.922.7948
E-mail: RuthMandel@davidsoncommunications.com
Press Release (114K),
Synopsis (76K),
Ruth Mandel Bio (132K),
Sir Martin Gilbert Bio (83K)
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