❦ Reader Reviews

❦ A truly magical memoir!!

Angels on the Clothesline is a truly magnificent work of literature. After The Tremble of Love, Ani Tuzman has again graced us with the poetic and magical beauty of her storytelling. This time she does it by bringing together fragments of her childhood and sharing highly emotional vignettes of family, nature, and school. Ani allows us to not only see but to feel her complex inner world as a child of two Holocaust survivors in a community where antisemitism was rampant. A memoir not to be missed. — Evelyn L. Ophir

 

❦ A very poignant memoir

Ani Tuzman’s latest literary offering, Angels on the Clothesline, captivated my heart from the very beginning. While I thoroughly enjoyed her debut novel, “The Tremble of Love: A Novel of the Baal Shem Tov,” this memoir struck a deep chord within me. Tuzman masterfully weaves together a collection of poetic essays, ranging from brief to substantial in length, to recount the remarkable journey of a young girl growing up in two distinct worlds. One world encompasses the existence of her religious parents, who are Holocaust survivors, while the other unfolds amidst the tapestry of immigrant life in America.

During the 1950s and 1960s, attending public school as a Jewish girl from an observant family posed a bewildering challenge. Tuzman skillfully portrays the conflicting lessons she received, such as the injunction to never utter the phrase “I’m sorry” unless genuine remorse accompanies it and never to use the word hate unless you are talking about Nazis. Yet, when confronted with outbursts provoked by her classmates, she found herself unjustly shouldering the blame and being coerced into issuing apologies she refused to offer. The author’s courageous stance against such unjust treatment exacted a significant toll on her well-being.

As I immersed myself in Tuzman’s heartfelt memoir, I discovered a tapestry of experiences that resonated with my own encounters as a Jewish individual. Tuzman’s poignant anecdotes serve as a window into the broader context of a time marked by discrimination and bias. Growing up, I witnessed my father, a talented Jewish electrical engineer, face discriminatory employment practices, which barred him from pursuing opportunities at various companies. Moreover, our family was confronted with exclusionary policies that prevented us from partaking in simple pleasures like swimming or joining certain clubs in New York City and State during the summertime due to their discriminatory stance against Jews. I recall my mother, a woman raised in an orthodox household but married to a Jewish atheist, cautioning me with the words, “You will inevitably encounter anti-Semitism.” Regrettably, her prophecy materialized. Throughout the memoir, Tuzman’s self-esteem emerges as an unwavering beacon, radiating a clear voice.

Angels on the Clothesline is a poignant memoir that delves deep into the multifaceted experiences of a young Jewish girl navigating the complexities of identity, faith, and discrimination. Ani Tuzman’s eloquent prose and insightful reflections offer a powerful and relatable account that resonates with readers from diverse backgrounds. This book serves as a testament to the indomitable human spirit and the triumph of self-worth in the face of adversity. —Sydney Flum-Stockwell

 

❦ A Captivating Portal into Our Own Inner Lives

Ani Tuzman has written more than a memoir about her early life told through a series of vignettes and prose poems. She’s created a vibrant, luminous portal for readers to explore their own childhoods, including their interior spiritual yearnings—whether they (we) recognize them as such or not.

Growing up the eldest daughter of Holocaust survivors, she intuited early that her parents suffering defined their lives. Readers may wish they had transformed their bitterness-as-a-defense against-a-brutal-world into more tenderness toward her and her younger siblings — to soften and help heal their broken hearts. Ani, though, played the hand she was dealt. She grew up both realist and spiritualist, assessing her lot with unflinching honesty.

The world of a Jewish family living in rural down state New Jersey, egg farmers no less, comes alive on these pages. Antisemitism and children’s cruelty may have been part of the narrative through line of Ani’s life, but so is the natural world, its beauty a loving shawl young Ani would wrap herself in. Nature was her best friend.

A keen observer from a young age, Ani knew she would be a writer. In “Alphabet”, her kindergarten self writes, “The letters have been there this whole time…Tall ones stand beside short ones like mother letters keeping their babies close…When will the teacher teach everyone to read? She tells you It’s not time… to be introduced to the letters… Reading will be a dream come true. The biggest dream of all. Except maybe for writing. Writing is a miracle too big to imagine.”

In a tumultuous world like the one we’re living in today, immersing yourself in the one writer Ani Tuzman recalls with such compassion and candor, is an elixir we all could use a healthy—and healing—dose of right now. —Rob Okun

 

❦ An instant classic!

Prediction: Angels on the Clothesline will quickly become a beloved part of history and literature class curricula for generations to come!

As one who has taught high school English, I am aware of what a gift this book will be to curriculums that champion social inclusion and value diversity. The main character, Annie, is an unforgettable heroine, a compassionate warrior, sure of her own inner fire. This is the story of a writer in the making. It is sure to inspire other young writers to have the courage to record their own experiences, including the most painful ones.

The style of this book–short and punchy prose-poems–should make it especially accessible to a wide range of students. Each chapter can provoke passionate discussion about such things as the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, immigrants, the Civil Rights movement, what is a good teacher, what is true friendship, and how to find a steady source of joy in the natural world.

This wise and powerful book is sure to become a favorite in classrooms and book groups. —Meg Fisher

 

❦ A Touching Story of Resilience

In this beautifully rendered verse memoir, Ani Tuzman bravely pulls back the walls of her little girl’s heart and opens a pathway so that every reader can vividly feel the contours of her experience as if it were their own—the joy, the pain, the incessant questions of someone trying to make sense out of her life while living with parents who were damaged by the Holocaust. From page one until the end, I was rooting for young Ani as she rose above horrific instances of bullying and anti-Semitism (from teachers as well as other children) and found solace and a path forward in the wonders of nature and the power of words. —D. Dina Friedman

 

❦ An astonishingly vivid and honest portrayal of childhood

I just finished reading Ani Tuzman’s memoir Angels on the Clothesline. It’s an astonishingly vivid and honest portrayal of her childhood as the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Ani doesn’t hold back from portraying her mother as a troubled individual, psychologically scarred by her past. Ani depicts her home environment on a chicken farm as both a refuge and a place of struggle. Her memories of antisemitic abuse by her elementary school teacher, principal, and her cruel classmates, are searingly painful. Yet there is much joy in the book also, coming from her love of nature, of reading and writing, of her father and siblings, and yes, of her difficult mother also, despite Ani’s conflicted feelings about her. The book is organized in a series of short passages, each with a title. I thought I would read only a few at a time, but the book drew me in and I found myself reading large chunks, thirty and forty pages at a sitting, and finished the whole work in just a few days. It’s always a telling sign for me of the success of a book when I read it quickly. The little chicken farm in New Jersey and the life that began there for the author will stay with me for a long time. I highly recommend this book. You may find that reading it brings back memories, good and bad, from your own childhood. I know the book had that effect on me. I congratulate Ani on her revealing and emotionally moving creation.  —Stephen Billias

 

❦ A lyrical and profound memoir

I took my time to read and savor Angels on the Clothesline, the memoir of a child of Holocaust survivors. It touched me on so many levels, but very much regarding my core belief in the depth of feeling and understanding experienced by all children. In her lyrical and touching style, the author shows how trauma is experienced and inherited. At the same time, she fills this work with beautiful images and sense memories. Despite the pain described, this is a work full of optimism, joy and love. I absolutely love this book and can’t wait to share it with friends and family!  —Lynne Eisenberg

 

❦ A poetic read about love and wonder as a child survivor

I enjoyed a full experience as I was reading and learning from the memoir, Angels on The Clothesline.

This was a difficult story, witnessing the parental effect of being raised by Holocaust survivors and by the terrible anti-Semitic incidents that the author endured. However, the many uplifting aspects of the memoir descibe how she was able to act and thrive as a free-spirited young girl, remaining wholesome and positive as she told her story.

Professionally I conducted many interviews with children of survivors but never had the opportunity to hear the traumatic impact of their parents in such an in-depth way.

That Ani wrote the memoir in short, poetic chapters enhanced the intensity and poignancy of the storytelling for me. The poetic style provided relief after some of the harsh childhood memories and offered a real grasp of her cultivated sense of wonder and her expressions of gratitude for life’s simple pleasures.

I was moved by her desire ” to write things that make people laugh and cry.” These personal statements were great takeaways from Ani’s book along with her great capacity for resilience as she sustained such wonder and her ability to feel love. —Maxine Lyons

 

❦ A stunning memoir written from the heart

In her stunning memoir, Ani Tuzman writes from the heart of her inner child. She shares her memories as vignettes by the observer who never leaves her side as she grows from child to adult. This format has given the grown woman the ability and the space to actually be in each story with the deep feelings of her child. Her heartbreak is real as is her abiding sense of self as she navigates through her young life as the daughter of immigrant parents who were survivors the Holocaust. The author is both empathetic and wounded as she tries to find her own truth. As the reader, I felt touched by her authentic expression of the unwavering emotions that children often hold within. Ani is brave beyond measure as she tells her story, showing deep love for this child whom she has faithfully accompanied on her life’s journey. I truly loved this book. Lisa Barstow– author of Don’t Go Back to Sleep and “Where the Two World’s Touch.

 

❦ I found me in Angels on a Clothesline

Some books make me just plain grateful on every page. Grateful that I had the good fortune to pick up this book and read it, grateful that I was not distracted at all by the differences between the child who grew up to write Angels on the Clothesline and the me reading the book who’s been an adult for so so long. Grateful that I saw the images Ani’s words painted and I felt the feelings of a little girl, growing up in a situation, and a circumstance that was so different than mine. This is one of those books that made me so grateful. More than anything else I am grateful that I not only felt and loved the little girl who came alive to me in Ms Tuzman’s book, but I also clearly felt and loved the little girl from the early part of my life, as well as the little girl that still lives within this creaky body of mine. —Claudia Milligan

 

❦ I just loved this memoir!

Written from an interesting perspective of the adult Annie talking to the child Annie, and using the voice and language of the child to put the reader in her shoes, Angels on the Clothesline is a work of art. The cruelty that Annie endured, and her sensitivity to her parents’ pain and trauma, makes her both courageous and kind. She carries that combination with her throughout the story, getting her own support from the loving and supportive natural world.

I learned so much, I highly recommend reading this book! —Marcie Sclove

 

❦ A Beautiful Memoir

Ani’s parents survived the holocaust, in which Jewish people were slaughtered, then they unluckily settled in an area in these great United States where the Constitution guarantees equality, but the bigots apparently disagree with their Constitution.

Annie, their sweet daughter suffered at the hands of the children of those bigots. She didn’t want to tell her parents, thinking that they had suffered enough already. So little Annie was alone, being tormented.

The ultimate moral of the story is that little Annie transcended. She somehow came to an understanding that there is no lotus without mud. This realization brought a deep spirituality to the adult Ani, and she has transcended her painful childhood.—Judith Weiler