Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Accommodation and Audacity

by Nora Rose Moosnick

Overview

Outwardly it would appear that Arab and Jewish immigrants comprise two distinct groups with differing cultural backgrounds and an adversarial relationship. Yet, as immigrants who have settled in communities at a distance from metropolitan areas, both must negotiate complex identities. Growing up in Kentucky as the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants, Nora Rose Moosnick observed this traditionally mismatched pairing firsthand, finding that Arab and Jewish immigrants have been brought together by their shared otherness and shared fears. Even more intriguing to Moosnick was the key role played by immigrant women of both cultures in family businesses—a similarity which brings the two groups close together as they try to balance the demands of integration into American society.

In Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Accomodation and Audacity, Moosnick reveals how Jewish and Arab women have navigated the intersection of tradition, assimilation, and Kentucky's cultural landscape. The stories of ten women's experiences as immigrants or the children of immigrants join around common themes of public service to their communities, intergenerational relationships, running small businesses, and the difficulties of juggling family and work. Together, their compelling narratives give greater voice to Arabs and Jews in America's rural areas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813154602
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	11/09/2021
Series:	Kentucky Remembered: An Oral History Series
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nora Rose Moosnick is an adjunct professor in the department of sociology at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Adopting Maternity: White Women Who Adopt Transracially or Transnationally.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction 1

1 Complexities 15

2 Publicly Exceptional 35

3 Maternal Echoes 75

4 Into Focus 111

5 Archetypal and Distant Figures 149

Conclusion 173

Postscript: On Being a Documentarian 181

Notes 189

Bibliography 195

Index 201

Editorial Reviews

An important, compelling work. Moosnick's analysis of the interbraided relationships and experiences of Arabs and Jews in a southern setting is a captivating and powerful story.

Marcie Cohen Ferris

"An important, compelling work. Moosnick's analysis of the interbraided relationships and experiences of Arabs and Jews in a southern setting is a captivating and powerful story."—Marcie Cohen Ferris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South

From the Publisher

Moosnick weaves together a refreshing blend of life stories and follows a captivating group of Arab and Jewish women through a narrative negotiation between tradition, assimilation, and Kentucky's cultural landscape.

Douglas A. Boyd

These compelling narratives challenge misconceptions and overcome the invisibility of Arabs and Jews in out of the way places in America.

Digital Journal

Nora Rose Moosnick's book, Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Accommodation and Audacity, grabs readers' attention before they open the book. One does not immediately associate the words 'Arab' or 'Jew' with 'Kentucky,' nor does the combination elicit expectations of affinity. Yet this is precisely what Moosnick seeks to redress in this compelling look at the lives of ten Kentuckians whose lives, she argues, are triply overlooked.

The Journal of Southern Religion - Laura Stemp-Morlock