{"id":40127,"date":"2022-12-09T02:19:56","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T10:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=40127"},"modified":"2022-12-08T18:08:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T02:08:41","slug":"love-through-good-and-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2022\/12\/09\/love-through-good-and-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Love through good and bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gloria Levi\u2019s recently published creative memoir The Hotelkeeper\u2019s Daughter<\/em> is a tribute to her family. And not just the family from whom she comes \u2013 the people who inhabit the main part of this story \u2013 but also the family she has made herself, the family members in the book with whom she shares her memories and those outside of it, who will read the story.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>The memoir is \u201ccreative\u201d because memory, almost by definition, is unreliable, and, with this book, the 90-plus-year-old Levi is going back to her childhood. The character Gilda, her avatar of sorts, is trying to make sense of her past:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are all gone \u2026 Jerry, Macey, Sadie \u2026 and Ida and Leo \u2026 Bubbie \u2026 I, Gilda, at the age of 90, am the only one left of my family of origin. I am the Omega generation, the last letter of the Greek alphabet. I remember so vividly the sweetness of family togetherness, extended family visits, our tight-knit community. How I loved them and felt loved by them: their vitality, their enduring values, their struggles, losses and successes, their remarkable resilience. They are a deep part of me. They are the heroes of a bygone era.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to her son and great-grandson, Gilda takes us to Powell Street, in Brooklyn, N.Y., 1938. She is 7 years old. She vividly describes her community, the neighbourhood of Brownsville. Her parents, grandmother and three siblings live downstairs in a duplex shared with her uncle and aunt and their family, who live upstairs. Money is sparse.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring their usual pinochle card game one Saturday evening in March,\u201d writes Levi, \u201cmy father turned to his cousin, Big Eliezer, and said, \u2018Eli, I really need to make a change. I don\u2019t want to go on like this. I know I can do better than my chicken store. What do you think, if you, Sammy and I were to rent a summer hotel? My brother Benny runs a hotel with partners. He\u2019s doing just fine. You know, with your catering experience, Eli, and the younger energy and determination of Sammy and me, I think we could make a go of it. What do you think?\u2019 Sammy nodded in agreement. Uncle Shimon closed his hand of cards and stared.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the rest, as they say, is history \u2013 and the meat of this memoir. Life isn\u2019t easy as the daughter of hotelkeepers. Gilda had been happy on Powell Street, had many friends and her favourite activities. She was very close to her grandmother, who didn\u2019t initially go with the family, and her parents were absorbed in the business. Gilda was lonely and often felt invisible. She has a challenging relationship with her mother, Ida.<\/p>\n

Through Gilda\u2019s story, we see how families like hers \u2013 an Eastern European Jewish family who immigrated to the United States \u2013 struggled and succeeded in their new homeland, through the Great Depression and the Second World War. We also see how Gilda grows into herself and begins to find her own way. The memoir ends in 1948, as Gilda starts university.<\/p>\n

As 90-year-old Gilda looks back at this foundational decade of her life, relating her story to her son Daniel and great-grandson Lenny, she ultimately reflects not only on what has passed, but what is yet to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the Lennys of today and the Idas of yesterday, I want to affirm their vision, their energy, and their inspiring dedication to build a fairer, more just and loving society.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gloria Levi\u2019s recently published creative memoir The Hotelkeeper\u2019s Daughter is a tribute to her family. And not just the family from whom she comes \u2013 the people who inhabit the main part of this story \u2013 but also the family she has made herself, the family members in the book with whom she shares her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[3429,1140,4242,21980,4526],"class_list":["post-40127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-family","tag-gloria-levi","tag-history","tag-hotelkeepers-daughter","tag-memoir"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}