The Yiddish Book Center’s “Stories of Exile” Reading Groups for Public Libraries is a reading and discussion program to engage teens and adults in thinking about experiences of displacement, migration, and diaspora.
Using Yiddish literature as a portal, the program will feature works in translation that explore narratives which grapple with questions of homelands, journeys, identity, and belonging. Reading groups will compare these works written in Yiddish in the early and mid-20th century to works by contemporary writers from all across the globe.
The goals of the program are:
- to introduce libraries and the public to Yiddish literature in the context of broader explorations of dispossession, exile, migration, and diaspora.
- to help prompt and inform ongoing discussions about displacement, in the context of war, genocide, climate change, economic and political upheaval, and other conditions of homelessness and relocation in the modern world.
Participating libraries will organize a reading group for adults and/or for teens aged 16-19, or for a combined group, to discuss three books of Yiddish literature in translation, as well as one book related to a community served by their library. Libraries will receive books for participants as well as discussion and resource guides. The reading group facilitator from each library will attend a workshop at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts to orient them to Yiddish literature in translation. All travel, lodging, and meal costs will be covered by the Yiddish Book Center for each library’s discussion facilitator.
The Yiddish Book Center will provide virtual public programs and downloadable discussion guides and reading resources for the reading groups.
Complete details and the application, due August 19, 2022, are available at https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/language-literature-culture/reading-groups-public-libraries.