About This Web SiteI want to speak to my readers. I want to say what is on my mind, raising controversial issues, turning over ambiguities, talking directly, without the intervention of publishers or publicists or pages or books. I want to be known and I want to know you. Biography
- excerpted from Jerilyn Fisher, Jewish American Women Writers On May 7, 1940, as Rose Chernin went through labor, she was reading a book between contractions: On the Woman Question, by Lenin's comrade Clara Zetkin. Ushering Kim into the world with that book by her side, Rose may have hoped to inspire Communist vision and activism in the adult her baby would become; instead, she seems to have unknowingly augured her daughter's commitment to and gift for writing about women. Born in the Bronx to two fiercely committed Marxists, Kim Chernin was exposed from the start to leftist teachings and impassioned political involvement. As a child, she marched with her mother, helped hand out Party leaflets, sang organizing songs, and overheard weekly Party meetings. Yet the Marxist teachings of Chernin's parents did not result in her later commitment to revolutionary ideologies and activism; rather, she became a poet, a mystic, and an interpreter of women's psychological experiences. These interests and capacities seem to have stemmed from the extended family circle of compelling storytellers. For young Kim Chernin, one early source of inspiration for writing came from her shtetl- born grandmother, Perle, who created Yiddish tales for other women to use in their letters abroad. Chernin was also influenced by her storytelling father, Paul Kusnitz, who liked to recite Pushkin and delighted his daughter with daily "homespun tales." Rose Chernin, another gifted teller of tales, sometimes left Kim bored with her didactic stories "about madness, revolution, the struggle to survive..." (Crossing the Border). Yet from her mother, too, Kim learned to harness and relish the power of the ranconteur. - Jerilyn's whole bio on Kim Current WorkI have recently published the following books:
During the last several years I have worked on three manuscripts:
I have decided to not publish these for the time being, but to go on writing and accumulating manuscripts. After twenty-five years of an active publishing life it seems a sane and peaceful way to proceed. Other LinksJewish Women and the Feminist Revolution: www.jwa.org/feminism
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