Barbara Cantalupo doc Heirs of Yesterday

<p>Originally published in 1900 and set in fin-de-siècle California, <i>Heirs of Yesterday </i>by Emma Wolf (1865&;1932) uses a love story to explore topics such as familial loyalty, the conflict between American individualism and ethno-religious heritage, and anti-Semitism in the United States. The introduction, co-authored by Barbara Cantalupo and Lori Harrison-Kahan, includes biographical background on Wolf based on new research and explores key literary, historical, and religious contexts for <i>Heirs of Yesterday. </i>It incorporates background on the rise of Reform Judaism and the late nineteenth-century Jewish community in San Francisco, while also considering Wolf&;s relationship to the broader literary movement of realism and to other writers of her time. As Cantalupo and Harrison-Kahan demonstrate, the publication history and reception of <i>Heirs of Yesterday </i>illuminate competing notions of Jewish American identity at the turn of the twentieth century.<br><br>Compared to the familiar ghetto tales penned by Yiddish-speaking, Eastern European immigrant writers, <i>Heirs of Yesterday </i>offers a very different narrative about turn-of-the-twentieth-century Jewish life in the United States. The novel&;s central characters, physician Philip May and pianist Jean Willard, are not striving immigrants in the process of learning English and becoming American. Instead, they are native-born citizens who live in the middle-class community of San Francisco&;s Pacific Heights, where they interact socially and professionally with their gentile peers.<br><br>Tailored for students, scholars, and readers of women&;s studies, Jewish studies, and American literature and history, this new edition of <i>Heirs of Yesterday</i> highlights the art, historical value, and controversial nature of Wolf&;s work.</p>