Title The fortune teller's kiss / Brenda Serotte

Published Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, ©2006

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 218 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations Series American lives American lives. Contents Turks -- Fortuna -- Lost -- Contagious -- Grace -- Northern lights -- Quiche lorraine -- Celebrity Summary "There was always the incantation: "Whoever wishes you harm, may harm come to them!" And just in case that didn't work, there were garlic and cloves to repel the Evil Eye - or, better yet, the dried foreskin from a baby boy's circumcision, ground to a fine powder. But whatever precautions Brenda Serotte was subjected to, they were not enough. Shortly before her eighth birthday, in the fall of 1954, she came down with polio - painfully singled out in a world already marked by differences. Her bout with the dreaded disease is at the heart of this memoir of growing up a Sephardic Jew among Ashkenazi neighbors in the Bronx." "This was a world of belly dancers and fortune tellers, shelter drills and vast quantities of Mediterranean food; a world of staunchly joined and endlessly contrary aunts and uncles, all drawn here in loving, merciless detail. The Fortune Teller's Kiss is a heartfelt tribute to a disappearing culture and a paean to the author's truly quirky clan, especially her beloved champion, her father. It is also a deft and intimate cultural history of the Bronx fifty years ago and of its middle-class inhabitants, their attitudes toward contagious illness, womanly beauty, poverty, and belonging."--Jacket Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL Print version record digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL Subject Serotte, Brenda -- Childhood and youth SUBJECT Serotte, Brenda fast Serotte, Brenda -- Childhood and youth nli Subject Jews -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography Sephardim -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography Poliomyelitis -- Patients -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography Jews, Turkish -- New York (State) -- New York -- Anecdotes BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Historical. HISTORY -- State & Local. HISTORY -- State & Local -- General. Childhood and youth of a person Jews Jews, Turkish Poliomyelitis -- Patients Sephardim Jüdin Familie Jews -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography Sephardim -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography Poliomyelitis -- Patients -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography Jews, Turkish -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography SUBJECT Bronx (New York, N.Y.) -- Biography New York (N.Y.) -- Biography Subject New York (State) -- New York New York (State) -- New York -- Bronx New York Staat Bronx (New York, N.Y.) New York (N.Y.) Sephardim. Genre/Form autobiographies (literary works) Autobiographies Anecdotes Biographies Autobiographies. Biographies. Autobiographies. Biographies. Form Electronic book ISBN 0803253877 9780803253872

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