A Partial List of Comments on Jane Lazarre's Books: Writers and Reviews

“A wholly original and important book… I cannot imagine a woman who would not be moved, or a man who would not be enlightened.”
Adrienne Rich on The Mother Knot

 

“Here, in these beautifully written pages, Jane Lazarre invites readers to join her on a difficult journey through memory, history, family and self-discovery. This daughter’s story of her father yields insight into our own, never-ending quest for love, justice and understanding.”
Farah Jasmine Griffin on The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter

 

“An important affirmation of a white woman’s love of her Black sons. Jane Lazarre, warrior mom, has crossed over.”
Alice Walker on Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness

 

“In the end there is the great gift of being taken into the life of American black culture. On the way there, this mother and child – the most intimate of relationships from infancy – has no public or political recognition for years. A kind of love story and useful as well to people in interracial lives and families.”
Grace Paley on Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness

 

“A powerful and poetic narrative that seems to float on a shifting surface of emotion. Memory seems buried, or drowned. Yet it breaks through. The novel strengthened my hope that art can stiffen our spines and shape up our thinking and feeling around race. Desire and love are radical and dangerous, and the ongoing effort to write seems like a rescue mission, a deep diving and life-saving mission.”
Sekou Sundiata on Inheritance

 

“Through the profoundly human caring of this book; its luminous beauty, passionate authenticity, truth and power; its multi-lensed and sourced hard-wrung wisdom – and yes, through the art with which it is written – we see, we feel, understand what we never have before, the ways of the Whiteness of Whiteness; and we are challenged, enlarged, and enabled, as was Jane Lazarre, to move beyond.”
Tillie Olsen on Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness

 

“She has it right! Perhaps even workers in the field will learn something about how patients feel. Thank you Jane Lazarre – from all of us.”
Lucille Clifton on Wet Earth and Dreams: A Narrative of Grief and Recovery

 

“I found this an intriguing, clear-eyed look at a corner of history, the Communist experience in America, that is usually just righteously condemned – or, occasionally, romanticized. Jane Lazarre’s vision of it is more subtle: she lived in this world as a child, and now looks back on it as a thoughtful adult.”
Adam Hochschild on The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter

 

“I spent the day reading one poem after the other, amazed and comforted by what Jane Lazarre has managed to get down in words and musical lines. The poem that struck me perhaps the deepest is Shubert Sinking In, how she manages to link music – that cello, that violin-with music of words, rising and falling, the exultation of hope amidst the dark despair of our lives – something I have pondered for years, but which Lazarre actually got down on the page in Breaking Light.”
Paul Mariani 

“Jane Lazarre excels in all forms, across multiple genres. Here, in Breaking Light, she gives us poetry as insightful as it is illuminating; poetry that you will want to return to again and again and again.”
Farah Jasmine Griffin 

 

“There is a formality in these pages, a reliance on structure to contain the powerful yet often restrained emotions. Light, nature, mourning, and love provide a deep and familiar comfort and stimulation that remain long after we’ve stopped reading.”
Miryam Sivan on Breaking Light

 

“This extraordinary memoir captures the crazy, scary, intellectually heady experience of growing up with a single father who’s a true believer and a daring Communist activist. You need not have lived through the Red Scare to appreciate the impact of deeply held politics on the dynamics of family life, the contemporary relevance of Jane Lazarre’s personal story and the lyrical grace with which she tells it.”
Letty Cottin Pogrebin on The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter 

“Lazarre remembers her Communist Party organizer father and how she grew up in his ‘powerful, endearing (and) at times intimidating’ shadow. Romanian-born Jewish radical activist William Lazarre was dedicated to ‘justice, human equality (and) dignity.’ In this moving memoir, Lazarre’s daughter, the distinguished author of both fiction and nonfiction, recalls his life by drawing on memory, court documents, and data from his FBI file. Reflective and intelligent, her narrative not only chronicles the life of a complex man, it also celebrates the power of memory and love. A poignantly lyrical memoir of family and politics.”
Kirkus Review of The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter

 

“The poems in Breaking Light sing of truth. There is power in words that refuse to let go, as these poems show. Their illumination and clarity insist on not forgetting.”
Lynn Sharon Schwartz

 

“Reading Jane Lazarre’s beautifully written memoir I was quickly drawn into her Jewish, immigrant left-wing family life. The story is filled with longings for the old world of Kishinev and the dreams for a perfected new world of justice and equality. The daughter writes of her father as a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a single father pursued by the FBI, and called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. She brings to life their love and conflicts and his few years as a proud grandfather. She conveys the rich mixture of Yiddish language and Jewish history, the old-world superstitions, the beauty and camaraderie of life in Greenwich Village of the 1950s, and centrally the deep love between a father and daughter. Her father’s idealism and values are today central to the lives of her adult African-American sons.”
Rabbi Rachel Cowan on The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter

 

“A perfect matching of subject and form. The dignity, spareness, the fairness and compassion for everyone in the story make it a delight to read . . . At her best, Lazarre takes chances which few of today’s fiction writers, more mannered and strategic, would.”
Philip Lopate on Some Kind of Innocence

 

 “Jane Lazarre has written a wonderful novel – generous, wise, brave and enthralling.”
Sara Ruddick on World Beyond My Control

 

“The Mother Knot deserves a permanent place in the stirring body of testimonial literature American feminism has given rise to.”
Vivian Gornick

 

“There is a marvelous amplitude, a sensual, moral, caring dimension, a dense substance to this life embracing novel. As expected of the author of the pioneering Mother Knot, mothering, children, are present with immediacy, depth, truth, almost no other writers summon, but this is far more. Those children, the young, the ripening, the coming to be old, the successor young are evoked for us – as is Charlotte herself – through the saga of her erotic, emotional, intellectual artist-being – a wonderful achievement. Set into the changing societal context bordered by mystery, beauty and death, the result is rare to come out of literature; tenderness for life, respect for human beings – power indeed.”
Tillie Olsen on The Powers of Charlotte

 

“Jane Lazarre here weaves a complex and fascinating memoir of her father, the life-long communist organizer and Spanish Civil War veteran, William Lazarre/Bill Lawrence. She writes movingly of her turbulent relationship with her father, of her rebellion during her teenage years, but also of his unstinting love for her. This book is an attempt to discover who her father really was, the significance of his life and his contribution as a communist to US society. In a meticulous, elliptical way, she builds up a fascinating interlace between the personal and the political of both their lives, and in doing so creates a fitting monument to a selfless and heroic US communist. This is a memoir rich in intelligent reflection of an aspect of US political history that receives little airing. A beautifully written and moving account.”
John Green, The Morning Star of England on The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter

 

“A very contemporary document. Meditative, often lyrical … compassionate and honest.
The New York Times Book Review of On Loving Men

 

“Lazarre weaves her drama of family relations with a focus on art and sexuality, and all the messy ambiguities that characterize real life.”
Kirkus Review of The Powers of Charlotte

 

“A beautifully written tour de force of a novel in the spirit of Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood.”
American Book Review of The Powers of Charlotte

 

“A beautifully written, deeply thoughtful journey into the worlds of self and other.”
Kirkus Review of Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness

 

“Lazarre’s voice is artful and measured . . . substantial food for thought for both white and black perspectives on the murky issue of race in America.”
Publishers Weekly review of Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness

 

“An illuminating book . . . offers invaluable insights not just for those working to raise children in biracial families, but for all who would like to understand the notion of whiteness in order to see beyond it and reach for fairness.”
Boyd Zenner, Women’s Review of Books of Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness

 

“A novelist, essayist and teacher, Lazarre presents her troubling but clear-eyes vision of her life and times with incisiveness and grace.”
John Gregory Brown, Chicago Tribune review of Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness

 

“Jane Lazarre’s memoir about her father is at once an intimate look into a rocky father-daughter relationship and an account of the fascinating life of a leader in the American Communist Party… the personal narratives offer a picture of the Party that cannot be found in more scholarly treatments of the Party, and this sets this book apart… This is one of those books that deserves many audiences. And for that I am grateful, as I believe its appeal, like that of Lazarre’s earlier memoirs, makes an important contribution to understanding aspects of American history and social consciousness that are not explored nearly enough.”
Emily E. LB. Twarog, Labor Journal review of The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter

 

“The poems in Breaking Light sing of truth.  There is power in words that refuse to let go, as these poems show.  Their illumination and clarity insist on not forgetting.”
Beverly Gologorsky

 

“Jane Lazarre is one of America’s foremost writers of memoirs, a few of which – among them The Mother Knot and The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter – are seminal works of contemporary non-fiction. She’s also a respected and accomplished novelist. But with Breaking Light – her first full-length volume of poems – Lazarre establishes her impressive bona fides as a poet who has important and urgent things to say and writes about them with a generous heart, depth and admirable craft.”
Jaime Manrique

 

“I’m struck by the sense of access to the underlife in these beautiful poems, the revelation of patterned interiority, a kind of permission and invitation to cultivate my own.”
Jan Clausen on Breaking Light

 

“A book that cuts close to the bone, its strength derives from the purity of its engagement with the intensities of emotional life, its refusal to back off from the messy, selfish, panicked, enraged feelings that pulse just beneath her/our social demeanor, yet always able to place these responses in a wiser perspective. Lazarre’s severe honesty is served by a perfected literary style of classical clarity and restraint.”
Philip Lopate on Wet Earth and Dreams: A Narrative of Grief and Recovery

 

“Jane Lazarre’s voice sustains me through the terror of my own most grievous losses. Her spiraling narrative, poetic or musical in its resonance, shows how grief that seemed a wall can become a door. Memory, that had seemed the enemy, becomes a source of plenitude and a companion in resurgence.”
Jan Clausen on Wet Earth and Dreams: A Narrative of Grief and Recovery

 

“This insightful Jewish mother opens our eyes to the pervasiveness of racism in our culture – a reality that Jews and other whites easily ignore.”
Rabbi Rachel Cowan on Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness

 

“Some Place Quite Unknown is as intimate and urgent as a confessional poem. Lazarre’s enraptured and lyrical prose probes, with admirable rigor and dazzling artistry, the deepest places of a woman’s heart. This is a powerful and original work.”
Jaime Manrique

 

“This beautifully written story reveals the subtleties of emotion that exist between white and Black people who love each other but have to navigate the incomprehensibility and ugliness of racial discrimination. A gripping story, it shows how the themes of race play out in the most personal ways.”
Nan Gefen, Persimmon Tree on Inheritance

 

“Reading The Mother Knot more than twenty years after its first publication, I am struck by how contemporary this terrific book seems – it is a modern feminist classic, certain to leave its readers changed from the experience of reading seldom spoken truths.”
Maureen T. Reddy

 

“Beautifully written – The Mother Knot says the unsayable, crackling with insights … at once profoundly consoling and terrifying, her finds are universal.”
Barbara Seaman, Washington Post Book World

 

“I’ve read so many books by now in which women have written in blood and bitterness about their experience with men that it came as a relief to see how someone is managing to reconcile conflicting feelings without rancor. I saw myself and a dozen of my friends in the woman she writes about.”
Rosellen Brown on On Loving Men

 

“A beautiful, profound and original novel… I could delve into it over and over and each time be freshly rewarded. Lazarre’s prose is stunning, as lyrical and metaphoric as it is multifaceted, and the journey of following her intricate interweaving of ideas and story-telling is akin to reading The Golden Notebook or Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins. This is a contemporary classic.”
Marnie Mueller on Some Place Quite Unknown

 

“A Powerful novel containing most of the things most women care about most.”
New Directions for Women on The Powers of Charlotte

 

 “This is a passionate, provocative, and moving narrative that should be on every American’s reading list.”
Sekou Sundiata on Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness

 

“This book is simply wonderful. Lazarre has woven a rich tapestry in which the past insists on itself in the lives of several American families. Beautifully orchestrated, her white characters must confront racism because of their love for black husbands, children, sisters, friends and teachers. Their journey from slavery to the present is unforgettably rendered. A fierce and honest novel that once again proves the searing truth of fiction.”
Beverly Gologorsky on Inheritance

 

“The ‘cut, poison and burn’ of cancer treatments gains astute psychological amplification in this newest volume of Jane Lazarre’s moving and surprisingly affirmative memoirs.”
Susan Gubar on Wet Earth and Dreams: A Narrative of Grief and Recovery

 

“This memoir breaks new ground in using the memoir genre to examine constructs of race and the history of racism in the United States.”
Maureen T. Reddy on Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness

 

“Jane Lazarre’s new book is a special sort of literary adventure. It has the rich, dense texture of life itself.”
Lynne Sharon Schwartz on World Beyond My Control

 

“Jane Lazarre has always been one of our bravest writers. She once again makes an art of raw, fierce honesty, as she moves through encounters with pain, loss, illness and death. Inspired by the urgent desire to know and be known, she has created an intensely gripping and profoundly moving work.”
Jessica Benjamin on Wet Earth and Dreams: A Narrative of Grief and Recovery

 

“Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness will be the classic Lazarre’s Mother Knot has become, a book in which a piece of American experience gets its full telling, a necessary book.”
Ann Snitow