Loving Strangers
Loving Strangers
AVAILABLE NOW | Non-fiction | Hardback
This book has already won the Hazel Rowley Prize (US, 2020) for the best proposal for a first-time biographer and was shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize (UK, 2019) for the best unpublished biography.
Jay Prosser has written a family memoir that at its core, builds a bridge across the terrible divides of our times. It’s a Jewish book, but not just a Jewish book. It moves Jewish writing away from its customary setting of the Holocaust and Europe and transports Jewish identity to Iraq, India, China and Singapore: places and cultures that most people (including Jews themselves) don’t associate with Jewish identity. It shows Jews integrating with others, not divisive, not separate: not antagonistic.
The issue of intermarriage is increasingly important for all racial groups and this book speaks beyond the Jewish community, in relation to how we treat strangers in the form of immigrants and other communities.
Read our Q&A with Jay Prosser about Loving Strangers HERE.
News and Press for Loving Strangers
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Summer 2024 Issue - Jewish Renaissance magazine
We are thrilled to be notified of this fantastic review of Loving Strangers in Jewish Renaissance. Thanks are due to Michelene Wandor, for her kind words and excellent analysis. Read a short excerpt in our blog, of the review titled 'Inside a wooden chest lay a mother's hidden love story' or purchase a copy of Summer 2024 here.
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"How I embraced my identity as a mixed-race, British-Asian Jew" by Jay Prosser"
Jewish Chronicle, May 23, 2024
I grew up enchanted by an alluring wooden box. Re-opening this heirloom 15 years ago revealed the Jewish seam in my family’s exotic history.
Jay Prosser
Jay Prosser is a Reader in Humanities at the University of Leeds, where he specialises in Jewish studies and creative nonfiction. He has published academic books, including the first study of transsexual life writing, ‘Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality’ (1998; Columbia UP), a book that continues to sell very well 25 years after publication; and ‘Light in the Dark Room: Photography and Loss’ (2004; Minnesota UP), an exploration of how writers have used photographs. He has worked on a book with Amnesty International examining the value of photographs of atrocity in our news media (Picturing Atrocity; Reaktion; 2012) and edited collections, including C20th American fiction, and gender and narrative. He has specialised in writing about Jews in Asia and Jews’ relations with other groups, particularly Arabs and Muslims. Visit his website, www.jayprosser.com