The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home (Juniper Prize for Creative Nonfiction)

Even as a fourth-generation Jewish Texan, S. L. Wisenberg has always felt the ghost of Europe dogging her steps, making her feel uneasy in her body and in the world. At age six, she’s sure that she hears Nazis at her bedroom window and knows that after they take her away, she’ll die without her asthma meds. In her late twenties, she infiltrates sorority rush at her alma mater, curious about whether she’ll get a bid now. Later in life, she makes her first and only trip to the mikvah while healing from a breast biopsy (benign this time), prompting an exploration of misogyny, shame, and woman-fear in rabbinical tradition. With wit, verve, blood, scars, and a solid dose of self-deprecation, Wisenberg wanders across the expanse of continents and combs through history books and family records in her search for home and meaning. Her travels take her from Selma, Alabama, where her Eastern European Jewish ancestors once settled, to Vienna, where she tours Freud’s home and figures out what women really want, and she visits Auschwitz, which—disappointingly—leaves no emotional mark. "Even as a fourth-generation Jewish Texan, S. L. Wisenberg has always felt the ghost of Europe dogging her steps, making her feel uneasy in her body and in the world. Growing up, she plays at hiding from the Nazis at her house in the suburbs, fearing that her asthma would make her unlikely to survive. In her late twenties, she infiltrates sorority rush at her alma mater, curious about whether she'll get a bid now. Later in life, she makes her first and only trip to the mikvah while healing from a breast biopsy (benign this time), prompting an exploration of misogyny, shame, and woman-fear in rabbinical tradition. With wit, verve, blood, scars, and a solid dose of self-deprecation, Wisenberg wanders across the expanse of continents and combs through history books and family records in her search for home and meaning. Her travels take her from Selma, Alabama, where her Eastern European Jewish ancestors once settled, to Vienna, where she tours Freud's home and figures out what women really want, and she visits Auschwitz, which--disappointingly--leaves no emotional mark"-- Provided by publisher Cover Advance Praise Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Contents Female Protection The Wandering Womb Grandmother Russia/Selma Notes on Camp Spy in the House of Girls The Year of the Knee Sock Separate Vacations Younger Men, Older Men Exercising the Past Halloween, Chicago French Yoga Mikvah: That Which Will Not Stay Submerged South Florida, Before The Jew in the Body The Land of Allergens Cream Puffs Late Night Up against It We Had Paris Luck: In the Valley Auschwitz: Like the Back of His Hand In Wroclaw, Formerly Breslau The Ambivalence of the One- Breasted Feminist Flood, Meyerland America: A Polemic Something to Sell A Traveler’s Lexicon The Romance of the Spiders Acknowledgments Notes Resources Back Cover With wit, verve, blood, scars, and a solid dose of self-deprecation, S.L. Wisenberg wanders across the expanse of continents and combs through history books and family records in her search for home and meaning.