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Curbstone is pleased to announce ywo new books relating to the Holocaust--Wayne Karlin's memoir Rumors and Stones: A Journey and Carol Ascher's Descriptions of these books are appended below for those interested. For a lengthy discussion of Rumors and Stones, see Gordon O. Taylor's "From Poland to Vietnam in The Nation, October 25, 1996. We would be very interested in hearing from teachers who use novels and memoirs in their holocaust courses. Excerpts from Rumors and Stones are up on our world wide web page, and we plan to have exceprts from The Flood up soon. You may download any excerpts on Curbstone's World Wide Web page for reproduction for class use at no charge. Our web address is: http://www.connix.com/~curbston/ We are also interested in hearing from teachers about their course needs in the areas of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and testimony. A number of our books, including The Flood, were published at the suggestion of teachers. Sincerely, Alex Taylor News From: Curbstone Press 321 JACKSON STREET, WILLIMANTIC, CT 06226 TEL: (203) 423-5110 FAX: (203) 423-9242 Curbstone re-issues Carol Ascher's The Flood. Review copies available now upon request. The Flood by Carol Ascher $11.95 paper. 183 pages. ISBN: 1-880684-43-8 Publication date: February 1997 Distributed in the U. S. by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution Curbstone Press has brought this remarkable novel back into print at the request of many high school and college teachers and the North Country American Conversation Project, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and St. Lawrence University. The North Country American Conversation Project involves author readings, author visits to schools, and author appearances on call-in shows on North Country Radio, as well as discussion groups in the region's libraries and bookstores. Since The Flood was the subject of the second of the "conversations" in the fall of 1996, Curbstone printed the book early for that program and scheduled its official release to the trade for February 1997. The Flood was first published by The Crossing Press in 1987 and has been out of print for many years. At the time of its first publication, it received many laudatory reviews: "A deceptively simple story about moral complexities seen through the eyes of a precocious but truly believable child."-Gerald Jonas, Present Tense "A refreshing and extremely moving novel."-Ms Magazine The Flood "is a powerful, poignant account of a young girl's coming to age." -Midwest Book Review In The Flood, nine-year-old Eva Hoffman, an Austrian refugee, and her family find a precarious safety in Topeka, Kansas in 1951, the year of the landmark desegregation case, Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education. As the rising river inundates the town, the Hoffmans open their home to a bigoted rural family, and Eva learns the complexities of prejudice-and courage-both within and outside her family. Eva is especially disturbed that her father seems to be losing the humanistic values he once embraced as a European and as a Jew. As the North Country Conversations guide comments: "Finding a balance between assimilation and maintaining her own ethnic identity is central for Eva, as is the issue of racial hatred, whatever its target." The Flood is a book that appeals to both adults and young adults, exploring, as it does, the issues of identity and prejudice through the eyes of a sensitive child. Carol Ascher divides her time between writing fiction and personal essays and studying public schools. She has published widely in literary journals. She is the author of Simone de Beauvoir and co-author of Hard Lessons: Public Schools and Privatization. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Utne Reader and others. About her motivation for writing The Flood, Carol Ascher recently wrote: "I was ten, a few months older than Eva in The Flood, when I traveled by train from our home in Topeka, Kansas, down through Oklahoma and then Texas. I remember sitting with my nose at the window. In the railroad station where we had temporarily halted, there were two sets of signs: at one end bright new signs read, "Ladies" and "Gentlemen"; at the other end, faded signs read "Colored Men" and "Colored Women." We were in the South. What sickening horror overcame me! Segregation. Sitting next to me in the train were my parents, Jewish refugees, who had fled Nazi Europe for the safety of America. I imagined getting out of the train and going to the bathroom with the "Ladies" sign, but there was no comfort for me in this privilege. "We Jews are not safe until everyone is safe," my mother often said, and I felt this to be so. "Segregation is no longer legal, but most Americans live very separately from their fellow citizens of other races. Although theories of racial or religious superiority are not acceptable in most circles, prejudice is still a deep, often unnoticeable, part of the way many of us think. Which is why I wanted to write a story in which the prejudice that we have learned to tolerate in ourselves and others would be presented fresh, and startling in its harsh truth. In The Flood, I follow Eva as she comes to painful and bewildering awareness that grownups and even other children often believe that their skin color or religion entitles them to better schools or a nicer neighborhood, or simply to extra respect. I have made Eva a brave and inquisitive girl, who badgers adults with "Why?" when other children are uninterested or afraid to ask. Although not all these questions have clear answers, I like Eva for her plucky curiosity and her stubborn sense of justice. I imagine her provoking her readers to ask further questions. Do people have to be the same to get along? Can we both love ourselves and enjoy others who are different?" We are pleased to bring this important book back into print and would be happy to send you a review copy upon request. Carol Ascher is also available for interviews and readings in the spring. Sincerely, Alexander Taylor Rumors and Stones: A Journey by Wayne Karlin (Curbstone, 1996) October 1996 * Memoir * Hardback $19.95 * 5 x 7 1/4, 224 pp. * 1-880684-42-X * World rights Northeast Tour. Wayne's publicist is: Mary Bisbee-Beek (612) 690-0907 Advance reviewers have recognized the importance and uniqueness of Rumors and Stones. Kirkus Reviews called it "A deeply emotional, intellectual, and literary examination of the Holocaust" and "A deft melding of disparate narratives, forming a unique and valuable addition to the literature of the Holocaust." Publishers Weekly called it "a haunting meditation on human courage and the erosion of morality by war." Library Journal noted that Rumors and Stones is "unusual in relating personal history from Vietnam to family experience of the Holocaust, and his insights are keen." The Holocaust and Vietnam intertwine in Wayne Karlin's physical and spiritual journey to Kolno, Poland, where his forebears lived before and during the Holocaust, and from the rumors and stones, he recreates the drama of his family's history and the scenes of their sufferings and survival. "In the summer of 1993 I began a self-imposed journey into the blurred space between memory, story, and reality when I rented a car from Warsaw Avis and drove to the village in Poland in which my mother had lived before emigrating to the United States." So begins Rumors and Stones, the haunting narrative of Karlin's journey into his past in a small Polish town of Kolno whose two thousand Jewish inhabitants were machine-gunned in ditches in 1941. What is unique about this tale is that Karlin explores the tension in the role of the story-teller as a witness and keeper but also as shaper; it is a journey in space that becomes a journey into the past and into the truth that can only be found in the imagination; it is a journey into Karlin's own origins as a veteran of the Vietnam war and as a writer compelled in his work always to come back to that conflict and the net of connections from it he feels like a "cicatrix just under the skin of the brain." Advance readers have also praised the power and beauty of this unique book. Maxine Hong Kingston wrote: "For the sake of humanity, we need to read Wayne Karlin on war and peace. Studying the holocaust of his immediate forebears and the Viet Nam/American War of his own experience, he has written a life-saving book. Courageously, he faces the necessary questions: What do these terrible events mean? What is the history and truth of what happened, and keeps happening? Where are we now? Who are we? What will become of us?" The impact of Rumors and Stones comes as much from the force of Karlin's language as it does from the content of the book. As Lucille Clifton commented, "I think that Wayne Karlin has more of a feel and understanding of the language than most poets I know." It is Karlin's moral vision that impressed George Evans, fellow Vietnam vet and poet: "The weakest writing about war and atrocities simply reiterates what we already know, but the best of it illuminates what we need to know and how it must be expressed, which is what this book is about. Karlin is one of our finest writers, and Rumors and Stones is the latest evidence of that fact." Wayne Karlin has written four novels: Crossover (Harcourt Brace), Lost Armies, The Extras and Us (Henry Holt). With Le Minh Khue and Truong Vu, he co-edited and contributed to The Other Side of Heaven: Postwar Fiction by Vietnamese and American Writers (Curbstone). Curbstone Press l voice: 860/423-5110 Publishers of Progressive, Multicultural Literature l fax: 860/423-9242 321 Jackson St. l home: 860/423-9190 Willimantic, CT 06226 l Web: /www.connix.com/~curbston/ "Poetry like bread / Is for everyone." -- Roque Dalton
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