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Sonia Pressman Fuentes
"If You Speak His Language"
From
Eat
First -- You Don't Know What They'll Give You, The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter
by Sonia Pressman Fuentes |
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Contact Ms. Fuentes at: spfuentes@comcast.net |
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If You Speak His Language
"Howja like
dot?" asked my father.
"Not dot," corrected Mother, unperturbed by Father's twenty-year
resistance to the niceties of English pronunciation. "Not dot. Dat. T - h
- a - t. Dat." For some inexplicable reason, Mother's tutorial method with
a man who had never mastered the alphabet was premised on spelling. I
suspected this technique owed its application not so much to Mother's
belief in its validity as a teaching tool but to her desire to demonstrate
her own superior grasp of the language. "All right," said Father, in his
I-stand-corrected tone. "Dat. Howja like dat?" And, then he said, in
astonishment and delight, "`Herry' Belafonte turns out to be a Jew!"
No amount of refutation from Mother and me had the slightest effect on
him. "Herry" Belafonte sang in Hebrew. Who else but a Jew would do that?
He was obviously one of those Black Jews, like those of Ethiopia.
Strictly speaking, Hebrew wasn't my father's language. Yiddish was. But
Hebrew was the language of the Bible, the other sacred texts and, in
recent times, the language of Israel. That was good enough for Dad.
From then on, "Herry" was a favorite in our house. On those notable
occasions when he made a TV appearance, the family would gather before the
set and sit in hushed and grateful silence. One of our own was on.
Accordingly, it came as no surprise to Father when "Herry" divorced
Marguerite, his African American wife, and married Julie Robinson, a young
Jewish dancer with the Katherine Dunham dance troupe. "Nu," said Father,
with that know-it-all sparkle in his eyes. "What did I tell you? A Jewish
fellah. First, he's got to marry a shikse [a gentile girl or woman]. And
then he finds a nice Jewish girl."
The acid test of reality never had a chance with my father. He had the
exasperating ability to conform reality to his own vision of it.
©1996 by Sonia Pressman Fuentes
This piece was published in Tzum Punkt (Nov.-Dec. 1999, Vol. 1, No. 2) p. 5, the newsletter of Yiddish of Greater Washington, and in the premier issue of Cafe Ami, an e-zine dedicated to Jewish diversity.
Read More:
- Jewish Geography -- this story was first published in October 1998 in Der Bay, the newsletter of the International Association of Yiddish Clubs. Here, both the English version and a version in transliterated Yiddish are available in pdf format.
- Return to Germany -- the story of Sonia’s return to Germany in 1978 to speak about the women’s rights revolution in the US for the then-US Information Agency (USIA), published on the website of The Jewish Writing Project on Jan. 19, 2009.
- If
You Speak His Language --This piece was published in Tzum Punkt (Nov.-Dec. 1999, Vol. 1, No. 2) p. 5, the newsletter of Yiddish of Greater Washington.
- Thai
Silk --
This piece was first published in the Common Law Lawyer and then on the websites of whispersmagazine.com, iagora.com, and BankgokAtoZ.com
(September 2001).
- Florida
and Beyond -- This excerpt appeared on May 25, 2001, in
the
Story Lady e-newsletter and on its website,
the Jewish Frontier, the Jewish Internet
magazine, the Jewish Magazine online, the e-zine,
Home-Based Working Moms, and the Writer Online.
Terry Boothman, the editor of the Writer Online,
had this to say about it in the January 14, 2003, issue that
carried the story:
Everyone's
life is interesting, right? Sure. So, everyone should write
a memoir, right? Yeah, why not.. And everyone should publish
a memoir, right? Good Lord, no. Because not everyone knows
how to write a publishable memoir, which means a memoir
that lots of other people will enjoy reading. Sonia Pressman
Fuentes, one of the founders of the National Organization
for Women, published just such a memoir--"Eat First--You
Don't Know What They'll Give You, The Adventures of an Immigrant
Family and Their Feminist Daughter." Now, in How I
Got My Mink Stole, excerpted from that memoir, you can get
a glimpse of exactly how good memoirs are written.
- Weinberg's
Glasses - the story of what happened when Sonia's father found a pair of eyeglasses.
- Sex
Maniac -- the story of the Second Wave of the women's
movement and Fuentes' role in it.
- Harry
Golden and "the Coat" -- Sonia Fuentes sues
Harry Golden, published in Jewish Currents, June 16,
1997.
- How
I Got My Mink Stole -- a lengthy struggle with an
unexpected denouement.
- Eating
Out -- published in the April 11, 2001, issue of Writer's
Bloc Online, the e-newsletter of the National Writers
Union.
- Graduating
With My Class -- Fuentes' desire to graduate with her
high school class has a significant consequence. Published
originally in the Catskill/Hudson Jewish Star 6.2 (June 1996)
17.1 and then on Harry
Leichter's website.
- Mother and the Night School -- published in the December 2001, issue of Kolot, A World of Jewish Voices.
- Catskills Stories -- Some of Fuentes' stories about her experiences in the Catskill Mountains of New York State may be found at the Museum of Family History.
Book Ordering Information |
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Fuentes -- Photographs |
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Germany, 1931
Berlin Shop, 1931
Germany, 1932
Belgium, 1934
Cornell, 1950
University of Miami, 1956
Washington, DC, 1966
Washington, DC, 1993
Coral Gables, 1990s
Sarasota, 1990s
Plainfield, 1998
Women's Hall of Fame
At the Capitol, 2000
Meadows Players, 2001
Piltz Library, 2001
Piltz, Poland, 2001
Sarasota, March 2002
Sarasota, April 2002
Lewin Studio, 2003
Alice Award, 2003
Book Signing, 2003
Teaching English, 2003
Book Bag Replica, 2004
AILF Awards, 2005
Foremothers Awards, 2005
IAYC Conference, 2005
Alice Paul Award, 2005
National Woman's Party, 2006
Potomac, MD, 2006
Bozeman, MT, 2007
CLEA Course, 2007
Cornell University, 2008
Cornell University, 2009
Close shot at Cornell, 2009
Sarasota, FL, 2009
Sarasota, FL, 2009
Sarasota, FL, 2009
Rockville, MD, 2009
Sarasota, FL, 2009
Oxford, London, Wales, 2009
Bradenton, FL, 2010
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