Cynthia Ozick Essay -- Biography Biographies Bio

Cynthia Ozick (1928 - .) Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City on April 17, 1928. She was the second of two children. Her parents, Celia (Regelson) and Wiliam Ozick immigrated to the US from the northwest vicinity of Russia. The family came from the Litvak (Lithuanian) Jewish tradition which was a tradition of skepticism, rationalism and antimysticism.Her parents owned a pharmacy in Pelham Bay section of Bronx. They worked very hard, usually fourteen hours a day. Cynthia delivered perscriptions sometimes. Her mother was a generous, lavish, exuberant woman full of laughter whereas her father was a discreet, quiet man. He was also a Jewish scholar, and knew Latin and German. When she was flipper and a half, her grandmother took her to heder, for Yiddish-Hebrew religios instruction. The rabbi told Ozicks grandmother to take her home because a girl did not have to study. But her grandmother brought her back the very neighboring day and insisted that she was to be accepted. Ozick is grateful to her grandmother for that instince and dates back her feminism to that time. She describes the Pelham Bay section of Bronx as a lovely place but it was brutually difficult to be a Jew there. She remembers having stones thrown at her or being called as Crists killer. At home and at the heder she was considered intelligent but she was particularly uncomfortable in school because she did not want to sing Christmas carols and was humiliated for that. She felt inadequate and tells that she suffered a wormlike childhood in grade school. But she was splendiferous in grammar, spelling, reading and writing. And to run away from the dreariness of being different, she dedicated herself to the world of books. She began reading with her older brothers... ...d.She has turned 80 earlier this family and has won not one but two lifetime achievement awards. In April 2008, she was receved the PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction and the PEN/Nabakov Award for long-suffering originality and consummate craftmanship. BibliographyTrust novel, 1966The Pagan Rabbi stories, 1971Bloodshed novellas, 1976Levitation fictions, 1982Art & Ardor essays, 1983The Canibal Galaxy novel, 1983The Messiah of Stockholm novel, 1987Metaphor &Memory essays, 1989The Shawl stories, 1989Fame & Folly essays, 1996The Puttermesser Papers novel, 1997Quarrel & Quandry essays, 2000 heritor to the Glimmering World novel, 2004The Din in the Head essays, 2006Dictation stories, 2008 Souces www.reaaward.orgwww.jewishvirtuallibrary.orgwww.complete-review.com www.myjewishlearning.com www.guardian.co.uk