Anthologies
My writing appears in over 40 anthologies. Here are a few of my favorites:
Idol Talk
Women Writers on the Teenage Infatuations that Changed Their Lives
Edited by Elizabeth Searle and Tamra Wilson
My essay, “This Crush Is My Crush,” explores my childhood infatuation with Woody Guthrie, the folksinger and social activist. “With Woody, I was chaste. Our only passion was for the land, the people, peace and justice. Together, we rose up against the evil capitalist bosses. I did love Woody’s rangy good looks: narrow face, squinting eyes that appeared to witness something profound in the distance, sexy cigarette dangling from his lips, jaunty cap tipped back on his head, strong hands caressing his guitar.”
How Does That Make You Feel?
True Confessions from Both Sides of the Therapy Couch
Edited by Sherry Amatenstein
My essay, "The Therapist Of My Dreams" (reprinted here), is about my blind date with Benny, a nutty psychiatrist who was terrified of mushrooms ("too phallic!"). Benny refused to take "no" for an answer, despite my warning him not to kiss me (resulting in a bit of violence on my part, although I'd never even thrown a punch before). That night with Benny forever changed my relationship towards therapists. "I yearned for one perfect therapist to whom I confided my sorrows during daylight hours, and another whom I would marry and share my bed with." After Benny, I gave up on finding perfection in therapists and husbands—yet somehow managed to find happiness in both.
Scribblers on the Roof
Contemporary Jewish Fiction
Edited by Melvin Jules Bukiet and David G. Roskies
My short story, "Elvis, Axl, And Me," is a comic romp in which Elvis Presley is alive, well, and pretending to be a Hasidic Jew living in the Bronx. "I met Elvis for the first time in the deli across the street from the elevated line on White Plains Road and Pelham Parkway. He was wearing a yarmulke on top of his head, and a lopsided, shiny black wig with long 'peyes' on the sides that drooped past his chin, a fake-looking beard to his collarbone, and a shapeless black coat, which didn't hide his paunch, even sitting down. His skin was as white as flour, and his eyes looked glazed, as though he spent far too much time indoors."
Desire
Women Writing About Wanting
Edited by Lisa Solod Warren
My essay, "The Root Of All Evil," explores how becoming a parent made me wish I had wealth, although I never had done so before.
"You'd never mistake me for a money-hungry woman even now. I dress simply, in T-shirts and jeans or yoga pants. As a kid, my left-wing parents raised me to be scornful of materialism. I never owned a Barbie, a Troll doll, or a Monopoly set, and I didn't have an endless array of dress-up clothes and princess accoutrements to wear as I paraded around our small Bronx apartment. And yet, the past few years as a mom have completely changed my philosophy about money."
DIRT
The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House
Edited by Mindy Lewis
My essay, "The Color of Cinnamon," explores how being the adoptive mother of a daughter from Guatemala has dramatically altered my relationship to keeping house.
"On a July afternoon, in a picture-book perfect, colonial, Mexican town, high in the mountains, my five-year-old daughter draws happily with markers in the shaded corner of the otherwise sun-dappled patio of our brightly-colored, art-and-plant filled, Mexican casa. I watch her as she bends her head intently over her coloring book. Her long, black hair, loose and shimmering, falls across her heart-shaped face. She resembles (far more than she resembles me) the sisters-in-law, Senoras Carmen and Silvia, who clean our casa and cook our meals."
110 Stories
New York Writes after September 11
Edited by Ulrich Baer
My essay, "Baby Lust," tells the story of how, after witnessing 9-11 close-hand, my husband and I, feeling our mortality as never before, were spurred on to become parents, after years of indecision.
"Despite telling myself to put my yearnings to rest, I feel 'baby lust' whenever I pass a mother or nanny out with a little one. If the baby is laughing and cooing, my envy level reaches stratospheric heights ... And then on the morning of 9-11-2001, at a little after nine o'clock, I find myself standing out on Sixth Avenue in the West Village, a few blocks from my apartment, just a couple of miles from the World Trade Center, close enough to feel that I can reach out and touch the flames. I watch as the second plane hits, watch as the buildings burn and disintegrate, crumbling like cigarettes."
