The Girl from Human Street

October 27, 2014
In a lyrical, digressive tracking of mental illness in his far-flung family, New York Times columnist Cohen (Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis Final Gamble) explores the tentacles of repressed memory in Jewish identity. Cohen’s grandparents on both sides came from Lithuanian shtetls and migrated at the end of the 19th century to South Africa. From modest beginnings as grocers and roving peddlers, they gradually prospered as business leaders and professionals in Johannesburg, far from the calamity of Nazi Germany. Cohen’s father, a doctor in Krugersdorp, settled in London after WWII, bringing his South African wife, June, née Adler; assimilation was the rule of the day, and the horrors of Auschwitz were not discussed. “Better to look forward, work hard, say little,” Cohen, born in the mid-1950s, writes. Paralyzing depression dogged his mother, requiring hospitalization and electroconvulsive therapy, and she made several suicide attempts over the years. Her manic depression was shared by other members of the family, which Cohen traces to being “tied to... a Jewish odyssey of the 20th century, and the tremendous pressure of wandering, adapting, pretending, silencing, and forgetting.” Cohen writes eloquently of the great looming irony of apartheid for the once similarly persecuted, now privileged Jews of South African, as well as the divisive oppression in Israel. Thoughtful, wide-ranging, he muses on his own migrations spurred by “buried truths.”

Starred review from November 1, 2014
In an effort to understand the modern Jewish experience, distinguished New York Times columnist Cohen (Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble, 2005, etc.) examines his family history of displacement, despair and resilience.The author has always prided himself on confronting the truth in his writing, but he knew that his work allowed him to escape the more difficult task of articulating a deeper personal truth. In this honest and lucid book, the British-born Cohen tells how his Lithuanian Jewish ancestors came to South Africa. Tolerated by white South Africans because they were also white-skinned, the author's relatives made prosperous lives as business people while avoiding the fate of millions of other Jews in Nazi Europe. Despite their successes, however, members of both sides of his family were plagued by mental illness. The genes that caused it "formed an unbroken chain with the past," which many of them tried to ignore. Cohen focuses in particular on the tragic story of his mother, June. Gifted and beautiful, she was also bipolar. When she and her family relocated to London, her symptoms surfaced and remained with her for the rest of her life. Cohen links June's unraveling with her sense of being a stranger in a strange land. Like one of his mother's relatives who ended up in Israel and eventually committed suicide, "[June] was a transplant who did not take." All too aware of how many South African Jews turned a blind eye to the problem of apartheid in South Africa, Cohen also examines Israel's evolution into a colonial nation that oppresses Arab minorities. Millennia of persecution and eternal exile has made a Jewish homeland a necessity, yet Israel will never fully succeed as a state until peaceful coexistence-of the kind white and black South Africans have slowly worked toward-becomes a reality. With limpid prose, Cohen delivers a searching and profoundly moving memoir.

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November 1, 2014
Sit on the fence and people get killed behind it. The many readers of New York Times columnist Cohen will recognize the plain talk and passionate commitment, as well as the insightful, sometimes controversial commentary on crucial contemporary issues. And the wit. Rooted in his extended family's immigration story, especially that of his mother (who, moved from South Africa to London, became mentally ill, and attempted suicide in 1978), he addresses here the role of Jews in twentieth-century history, from Eastern Europe to South Africa to Britain to Israel. Never simplistic, he acknowledges that under apartheid most Jews looked on and kept quiet. As a child, he heard it Thank God for the blacks. If not for them, it would be us even as he points out the strong Jewish role in anti-apartheid resistance. Later, in Israel, his immigrant family split over the Occupation. Sure to spark debate, the often-painful immigration story stays with you, about then and now: As a child, trust was a stranger . . . . I had to look both ways. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2014

Award-winning New York Times columnist Cohen chronicles the post-Holocaust Jewish experience largely through the life of his mother and her family, moving from Lithuania to South Africa, England, the United States, and Israel to consider the all-too-familiar racism of apartheid, for instance, and how the inevitable sense of otherness has damaged his family emotionally, contributing to a deep streak of manic depression.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2014

Journalist Cohen (New York Times; Soldiers and Slaves) presents a sprawling, multifaceted memoir that delves deeply into his family history, his mother's struggle with mental illness, and broader issues of Jewish identity, history, culture, and belonging within a wider diaspora. With his mother, June, firmly at the center of his tale, the author ably weaves disparate threads of his ancestors' stories, tracing their paths from Lithuania to apartheid-era South Africa, and eventually his family's settlement in England, where June's bipolar disorder emerged. VERDICT Cohen's nonchronological structure, sometimes elusive prose, and tendency to circle back to topics may challenge some readers. However, his creative approach to the genre form, deeply considered views, and candor will yield poignant rewards for thoughtful memoir fans interested in Jewish history, the modern Jewish experience, issues of displacement and immigration, or family struggles to cope with mental illness. Readers interested in Jewish immigration narratives may also consider Lucette Lagnado's The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. [See Prepub Alert, 7/21/14.]--Ingrid Levin, Salve Regina Univ. Lib., Newport, RI

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.