Overview

In her memoir My Father, the Messiah, Gil Hochberg traces a father-daughter relationship as it transforms across decades—from intense closeness in childhood to a fraught distance as Hochberg’s father Yossi becomes increasingly convinced that he is the Messiah. After building a career as a statistician in the US, Yossi returns to Israel and becomes an avid Zionist, while having several psychotic episodes. Hochberg reconstructs her relationship with her father through an archive of letters between the two, as well as her father’s personal writings, painting a tender portrait of the non-normative family life within which Hochberg’s queer identity unfolds and a heart-rending account of her father’s mental decline. Hochberg crafts a powerful story of intimacy and loss that dovetails with sea changes in Israel’s religious and political environment since the 1990s.

Full Product Details

9781478032915

Table of Contents

Reviews

“In a narrative that refuses the confinement of a single identity narrator, My Father the Messiah is a genre-bending book. Hochberg’s emotional and intellectual journey to contend with the legacy of her complex, mentally ill father and her identity as queer and Jewish—is heavy and at times dark, but her writing is concise, emotionally steady and often funny. It is a smart, tragic, hopeful, strange book, and I was totally immersed in it from start to finish.”—Mikhal Dekel, author of, Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey “Gil Hochberghas written a deeply compelling and moving book that offers a powerful account of her relationship with her father up to and after his death. In this decidedly queer father-daughter tale, Hochberg’s vulnerable exploration of the whirl of desires that animated their relationship and the way that these desires shift over time will leave the reader wanting more.”—Laura Levitt, author of, The Objects that Remain

""In a narrative that refuses the confinement of a single identity narrator, My Father the Messiah is a genre-bending book. Hochberg's emotional and intellectual journey to contend with the legacy of her complex, mentally ill father and her identity as queer and Jewish--is heavy and at times dark, but her writing is concise, emotionally steady and often funny. It is a smart, tragic, hopeful, strange book, and I was totally immersed in it from start to finish.""--Mikhal Dekel, author of, Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey

Author Information

Gil Hochberg is Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Visual Studies, Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies at Columbia University. She is author of Visual Occupations: Vision and Visibility in a Conflict Zone, Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future, and In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available