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Adrienne Rich (1929 - ): The Writer and the Political Activist
When Rich determined to explore her Jewishness in the 1980s, she was already celebrated as one of the founding mothers of modern feminism, a woman whose many volumes had created the consciousness of generations of readers. She approached her Jewish life, both public and private, with the boldness and political acuity, the sensitivity to human rights as part of the legacy of Judaism, and the sheer excellence in shaping texts that had characterized her earlier work.
Rich’s Jewish work details the ambiguities of her Jewish heritage; she continues to delve into the ramifications of the Shoah, as in her writings on Ethel Rosenberg and the collapse of modern lyrics; she wrestles with traditional liturgical forms such as the Kaddish and writes about the hard awareness of being Jewish in a university. She blinks her eyes at nothing.
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