Hila Colman

I read and enjoyed many books by Hila Colman when I was a kid, so when I saw that she had written a YA novel about the child of an interfaith marriage in 1968, the very year my parents began their "mixed marriage," I wanted to read it. I got it from my local library system and I will admit I was wondering if this book was a candidate for the Awful Library Books blog. (The books they feature are not awful books, but awful choices for a public library, usually because they are very dated.) But show more this book greatly exceeded my expectations.

The main character Sophie goes to a private school in NYC and has a Jewish mother and a Protestant father, neither of whom are religiously observant. So far Sophie's childhood sounds exactly like mine. Sophie thinks that religious differences are irrelevant and believes she lives in a world where prejudice doesn't exist. But then right before her senior year, her family moves to the New England town where Sophie's mother is from. It's a very anti-Semitic place where Jews aren't allowed in the country club or on the school board. At the same time Sophie's grandparents are breathing down her neck to get her to be "more Jewish." Here are a few of the things that happened that I felt could have been ripped from my life:

-Sophie asks for butter for her bread at her grandparent's fleishig meal, not knowing that they keep pareve and don't mix meat and milk, and this sends her grandmother into a tailspin. (In my family, my brother asked for a glass of milk with his corned beef sandwich while we were eating with our grandparents at the Second Avenue Deli, and this was not received well.)

-Despite keeping these dietary rules, Sophie's grandmother likes to eat lobster when she goes to a restaurant. (My grandmother too, except she liked shrimp.)

-Sophie has a relative who terrifies her by telling her that it doesn't matter if she's "half-Jewish" or how assimilated she is, the bad people will still know she's Jewish and round her up when the time comes.

Sophie falls for a dreamy blonde boy whose mother happens to be the anti-Semitic head of the school board and who bitterly opposes Sophie's father, the new school principal. Sophie's parents stir up a Romeo and Juliet situation by telling Sophie she can't date the boy. Over the course of the book Sophie vanquishes her own internalized anti-Semitism. Overall I thought the novel was very nuanced and well-written. It reminded me a bit of Summer Begins by Sandy Asher. The only thing that I thought was weird was that Sophie's grandparents change out their dishes for Passover but then they eat pierogi at their Seder--the shellfish at a restaurant thing practically seems traditional, but what's going on with this?

The cover and title are very antiquated and unappealing so I sort of doubt many kids are going to check Mixed-Marriage Daughter out of the library, but if they do they will understand it's an old book and learn a lot of history. Especially about "restricted" hotels, which people never talk about anymore and I think people prefer to believe that prejudice only existed in the South.

After finishing this I looked up Hila Colman. My mom knew her so I just assumed that Colman was the same age as my mom, but actually Colman was born in 1909! So she was publishing books about teenagers until she was over 80 years old! And she wrote more than 50 books! I thought Jeanette Eyerly was the queen of YA for writing lurid teen problem novels into her 70s, but Hila Colman steals the crown! I feel like she is due to be rediscovered or reprinted, but stuff like that hardly ever happens, so your best bet is to search her out in your own library before all these older books get deaccessioned. show less

Even though this is so old it's like historical fiction, it's still all too relevant.

Too many rich and/or white Americans still think that they know more about how to "save" the residents of the inner-city. Too many think diversity is a good thing... in principle.... And cops still harass and beat up "black" youth. The author of this book earnestly shows us the racism, and the fallacy of the brand of liberalism that talks about it.

Btw, Benny is only eleven; this is not the teen book I was show more expecting when I picked it up from the Little Free Library. But it's chewy enough for teens and even adults. show less

This was one of my favorite books growing up, and I think it's now out of print. It's a pretty typical story of a 13-year-old girl and her growing pains, but it has some unusual elements thrown in -- the girl's mother leaves the family to live with another woman (it's never spelled out whether the mother is bisexual) and the older sister drops out of school to live with her boyfriend. It's in diary form, which I recall was all the rage in YA novels in the 70s.

I could copy the only other review for this book word for word and feel like my feelings were adequately summed up.
I will add however that I feel like this gives a very interesting backdrop to modern Jewish opinions.