Tamara Helfer will be discussing her new translation of The Winding Road: My Childhood Years by Rokhl Feygenberg
In Tamara T. Helfer’s masterful translation, the narrator describes her fictional village of Bulin, deep in wild swampland and forests, far away from the world of books where she finds solace. Readers are enmeshed in the daily rituals of rural Jewish life, following the narrator through her long days of labor and caring for family. Her story, at times funny, at times full of pathos, is a clear-eyed description of youthful imaginings with three-dimensional, flawed characters, and vivid descriptions of everyday shtetl life.
The Winding Road presents an unvarnished portrait of nineteenth-century Jewish life and offers readers a deeper understanding of the vast distance turn-of-the-century women traveled to find a fully realized life.