Multi-generational Jewish Stories

Multi-generational Jewish Stories from Around the World

A Two Author Event

Wednesday, October 14 · 1pm

$10 Florida Series

Esther Amini Concealed: Mem­oir of a Jew­ish-Iran­ian Daugh­ter Caught Between the Chador and America

Esther Ami­ni grew up in Queens, New York dur­ing the free­wheel­ing 1960s in a Per­sian-Jew­ish house­hold, whose par­ents had fled Iran. Con­cealed tells the sto­ry of being caught between two worlds, a duti­ful daugh­ter of tra­di­tional par­ents who hungers for self-deter­mi­na­tion. In this poignant, funny, uplifting memoir, Amini documents how family members build, wound, and save one another across generations; how lives are shaped by the demands and burdens of loyalty and legacy; and how she rose to the challenge of deciding what to resist and what to accept.

Esther Ami­ni is a writer, painter, and psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic psy­chother­a­pist.

Jonathan Kaufman Last Kings of Shanghai

This Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s epic, multigenerational story details two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong in 20^th China. By the 1930’s the Sassoon and Kadoorie families, both originally from Baghdad, had been doing business in China for a century, profiting from the Opium Wars, surviving Japanese occupation, courting Chiang Kai-shek and losing nearly everything as the Communists swept into power. This remarkable tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue and survival tells how these families participated in China’s economic boom but were blind to the country’s deep inequality and political turmoil. The long-hidden odysseys of the Sassoons and the Kadoories hold a key to understanding modern China’s modernization and global power.

Jonathan Kauf­man has writ­ten and report­ed on Chi­na for thir­ty years for The Boston Globe, covering the Tiananmen massacre in 1989; The Wall Street Jour­nal, as bureau chief from 2002 to 2005; and Bloomberg News.