Miriam Raskin

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Miriam Raskin (1889–October 18, 1973) was a Yiddish-language writer.

Biography[edit]

Raskin was born in Slonim, Belarus in 1889.[1] As a teenager, Raskin was an active member of the socialist General Jewish Labor Bund, participating in the 1905 Revolution.[2] As a result of this political activism, she was imprisoned for a year in St. Petersburg.[3] Raskin would fictionalize this experience in her 1951 novel Zlatke.[4] The book used “religious language and metaphor to express Zlatke’s revolutionary fevour”[5] She also addressed her Bundist activism in her later book Tsen yor lebn, written as a series of diary entries.[6]

In 1920 Raskin emigrated to America, where she began to publish short stories in Di Tsukunft and Forverts.[1] In her later years she lived in the Shalom Aleichem Houses in the Bronx, run by the Arbeter-Ring.[7]

Bibliography[edit]

Novels:

  • Tsen yor lebn: di finfte yorn. New York: Frayhayt, 1927.

Short story collections:

  • Shtile lebns. New York: A grupe fraynt, 1941.

Stories in English translation:

  • "Zlatke" in Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers
  • "At a Picnic" in Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers
  • "In the Shadows" in New Yorkish: And Other American Yiddish Stories
  • "No Way Out" in New Yorkish: And Other American Yiddish Stories
  • "Generation of the Wilderness" in New Yorkish: And Other American Yiddish Stories
  • "In the Automat" in Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from The Forward
  • "She Wants to be Different" in Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from The Forward

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Fogel, Joshua (2019-05-27). "Yiddish Leksikon: MIRYAM (MIRIAM) RASKIN". Yiddish Leksikon. Retrieved 2024-04-29.
  2. ^ Glinter, Ezra, ed. (2016). Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from The Forward. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393254853.
  3. ^ Rosenfeld, Max, ed. (1995). New Yorkish: And Other American Yiddish Stories. Sholom Aleichem Club Press. p. 77. ISBN 9780961087012.
  4. ^ Yaros, Laura (February 27, 2009). "Miriam Raskin". Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Retrieved 2024-04-29.
  5. ^ Forman, Frieda, ed. (1994). Found treasures : stories by Yiddish women writers. Second Story Press. p. 105. ISBN 0929005538.
  6. ^ Holdstein, Deborah H. (1999). The Prentice Hall Anthology of Womens Literature. Prentice-Hall. p. 378. ISBN 0130819743.
  7. ^ "Fun organizatsyaneln lebn". Lebns-fragn. January 1, 1974. p. 22.