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Winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the Ferro-Grumley Award: A beautiful novel about the strength of love and personal perseverance during the political fervor of the Progressive Era Set in Russia and New York during the early twentieth century, Beyond the Pale follows the lives of two women born in a Russian-Jewish settlement who immigrate to New York's Lower East Side. Gutke Gurvich is a midwife who travels to America with her partner, a woman passing as a man. Their story crosses with that of Chava Meyer, a girl who was attended by Gutke at her birth and was later orphaned during the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. Chava immigrates with the family of her cousin Rose, and the two girls begin working at fourteen as they live through the oppression and tragedies of their time. They grow to become lovers, which leads them to search for a community they can truly call their own. Touching on the hallmarks of the Progressive Era--the Women's Trade Union League, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, anarchist and socialist movements, women's suffrage, anti-Semitism--Dykewomon's Beyond the Pale is a richly detailed and moving story, offering a glimpse into a world that is often overlooked.… (more)
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BEYOND THE PALE begins in Poland/Russia in the late 1880s. Gutke Gurvich was the daughter of a rape victim. Her mother left her home because of how she and her baby would be treated by their neighbors. She became a midwife because there would always be work. Using her knowledge of herbs, she also helped treat medical problems, including those to help women in labor.
One of her patients is the mother of Chava Meyer. After Chava’s parents were murdered in a progrom. Chava moved to New York City to escape the dangers of being Jewish in Russia.
BEYOND THE PALE is a wonderfully told story of the lives of these women, both personally and as members of the societies in which they lived: the poverty, work environments, and society. It speaks of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and of the growing labor movement. It also examines coming to terms with lesbianism.
Tidbits:
“My mother accepted bad and good luck on faith; it was all part of what God had laid out, the road she was meant to walk. Pesah’s understanding was more complicated. By her, you needed more than faith, you needed to admire yourself just as you came, God was in you...but your own self was also something you moved on your on. You decided to act, not just God–or, God forbid, the Tsar–decided for you.”
“Men must have a factory where they make disagreements. Ordinary ones sold for a couple of kopeks, big ones for a ruble. My family kept this factory in business. Women worked so men could argue.”
“Was it just an accident that Mama and Papa were in the wrong place at the wrong time? What about the real sins, the sins of the people who killed them?...God took to long to punish murderers. It was no wonder human beings invented vengeance.”
“It was always men who were remembered for what they wrote. Maybe in the new world things would be different, and women would be remembered too. No one remembered working girls–was that why women had children, so someone would remember us?”
Elana Dykewomon’s writing draws us into the lives of the women and keeps us there after the story is told.
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