Overview

Present Past is a collection of stories, artwork, and poetry by Ava Kadishson Schieber. Like her debut work, Soundless Roar, this multi-genre collection creates rich and varied pathways for readers to approach Schieber as well as the absorbing events and transformations in her life as a Holocaust survivor. The focus of Present Past is her life after the Shoah. Rejecting stereotypes of survivors as traumatized or broken, Schieber is stark yet exuberant, formidable yet nuanced. The woman whoemerges in Schieber’s Present Past is a multifaceted, heterogeneous figure—poet, artist, and survivor. In it, she plays the passionate observer who dispassionately curates the kaleidoscopicmemories of her tumultuous personal and professional life in Belgrade, Prague, Tel Aviv, New York, and Chicago. Organized into thirteen chapters, each a blend of images, poems, and narrative, this moving new work offers myriad points of entry to readers of these genres, those fascinated in the relationship between the Holocaust and art, as well as readers interested in memory and survivorship.

Full Product Details

9780810134669

Table of Contents

Reviews

In these pages, Schieber is a captivating person both as a protagonist and as the artist responsible for the collection itself. Her poetry, drawings, and prose share a stark quality, one that touches on many senses of the word: sharp, severe, blunt, simple, and striking. This starkness is powerful in and of itself, but it is especially potent in the context of the Holocaust a subject that often seems to resist such direct, unadorned responses. Todd Hasak-Lowy, author of Somewhere There is Still a Sun

In these pages, Schieber is a captivating person both as a protagonist and as the artist responsible for the collection itself. Her poetry, drawings, and prose share a stark quality, one that touches on many senses of the word: sharp, severe, blunt, simple, and striking. This starkness is powerful in and of itself, but it is especially potent in the context of the Holocaust a subject that often seems to resist such direct, unadorned responses. Todd Hasak-Lowy, author of <i>Somewhere There is Still a Sun</i>

Author Information

Ava Kadishson Schieber was born in Novi Sad, a city near Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and survived the Holocaust in hiding on an isolated farm. A Chicago resident for thirty years, she is the author of Soundless Roar.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available