The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture

Tony Kushner's award-winning epic play Angels in America was remarkable not only for its sensitive engagement of Jewish-American and gay culture but also for bringing these themes to a mainstream audience. While the play represented a watershed in American theater and culture, it belies a hundred years of previous attention to queer Jewish identity in twentieth-century American literature, drama, and film. In The Passing Game, Warren Hoffman sheds light on this long history, taking up both Yiddish and English narratives that explore the tensions among Jewish identity, queer sexuality, performance, and American citizenship.

With fresh insight Hoffman examines the 1907 Yiddish play God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, the cross-dressing films of Yiddish actress Molly Picon, and several short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer. He also analyzes the English-language novels The Rise of David Levinsky (Abraham Cahan), Wasteland (Jo Sinclair), and Portnoy's Complaint (Phillip Roth). Hoffman highlights the ways in which the characters in these canonical texts attempt to "pass" as white, straight, and American in the early and mid-twentieth century. This pioneering work is a welcome contribution to the study of Jewish American literature and culture.

Author: Warren Hoffman
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 11/03/2008
Pages: 206
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.20w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780815632023

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 05/29/2009 pg. 17
Choice 01/01/2010
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2009 pg. 281

About the Author
Warren Hoffman teaches literature at Temple University, where he works primarily on Jewish American literature and musical theater. He is the director of Arts and Culture Programming for the Gershman Y in Philadelphia.