by Spencer Merolla

Recipes for Success

A buffet of short stories from Lara Vapnyar.

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Conventional wisdom dictates that you should never shop for groceries while hungry. I would further advise that you not pick up a copy of Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love (Pantheon, $20) by Lara Vapnyar on an empty stomach — it is impossible not to crave a steaming bowl of borscht after dipping into Vapnyar’s latest literary offering. Conveniently, then, this collection of six short stories is followed by an appendix of as many recipes.

Spring 2009

Women in writing groups learn to take seriously their skills, and themselves.
Female resistance to the Nazis. Jewish women doctors who pioneered birth control. Teen sex crisis in comic form.

Beautiful, for a Feminist

by Jennifer Baumgardner

Two Doctors/One Friendship

by Salomea Kape-Jay

Love Letter

by Shira Spector

Summer 2020

Informed predictions for the uncertain future • Farewell to shopping • Growing up Persian • Vivian Gornick & Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz revisited • 1930s feminist fiction — in Yiddish! • Unetaneh Tokef for Black Lives

Spring 2020

Hair and all its complications • Raising feminist boys today • Tipping, service work and our changing world • A hot new Yiddish star • Taking off my wedding ring

Winter 2019-2020

DNA secrets, hidden identities • Breast cancer and Jewish women • Tillie Olsen: feminist foremother • At her ritual haircut, she knew she was a girl • The first lady of lox

Fall 2019

#MeToo stories • Jewish women and breast cancer: crisis, intimacy, recovery • Jennifer Weiner on “chick lit’s” power • Suddenly, period positivity • A feminist Jew’s tough search for holiness in community.

Recipes for Success

A buffet of short stories from Lara Vapnyar.

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