Diary of a Lonely Girl, or the Battle Against Free Love

Who knew that a century before Lena Dunham’s Girls, a Yiddish writer named Miriam Karpilove was already telling the world, in mordant, sometimes hilarious prose, what it was like to be a young Jewish woman in New York City? In Jessica Kirzane’s expert translation, Karpilove’s novel is revealed as a brilliant critique of the political cant of its time, with ‘free love’ meaning, more often than not, protection for men and increased vulnerability for women. A lost treasure of modern Yiddish literature, Diary of a Lonely Girl will be a revelation to anyone who cares about immigrants’ experiences, women’s rights, and the roles of Jews in American radicalism. Jessica Kirzane's translation of Karpilove’s extraordinary novel, Diary of a Lonely Girl, opens up anew the life of a young Jewish woman in the early years of the last century. Here the complexities of desire, the challenges of free love and its simultaneous backlash could not be more relevant! TEACH this book, share it with your reading group, tell your friends about it! Kirzane has given new life to this heretofore little known classic! Both hilarious and sobering, Karpilove’s Diary breaks the mold of the serialized romance novel to bring us something unique: a sophisticated, insightful, and witty heroine who holds her own against bloviating suitors and prying landladies, never giving up her dreams of equality, freedom, and fulfillment in love. This is absolutely an original and needed book. So little Yiddish literature by women has been translated, especially literature by Yiddish women writers in the U.S. Many readers, scholars, students and teachers who cannot access the text in the original Yiddish will be delighted to have this translation with its thorough bio-critical introduction. The novel challenges many stereotypes and expectations about immigrant writing and thus offers a fresh and provocative take on the lives and preoccupations of early twentieth century immigrant Jews. Love, sexuality, and politics all merge in this brilliantly written novel of early twentieth-century immigrant life told from the perspective of a woman.