Clare Kinberg will read from her new book, By the Waters of Paradise: An American Story of Racism and Rupture in a Jewish Family, and will be joined in conversation with Lisa Heineman. Telling Kinberg’s story of how, in 2016, she discovered her estranged Aunt Rose’s death certificate on the Internet and “[unearthed a series of] contradictions of what “family” means in a segregated United States,” By the Waters of Paradise is praised by Lila Corwin Berman, professor of history and of Hebrew and Judaic studies of New York University, as “an intimate memoir and a history of racism, religion, and politics, Kinberg reveals her aunt’s story with sensitivity.”

Clare Kinberg is the publisher and editor of the Washtenaw Jewish News, a monthly newspaper in southeast Michigan and from 1989-2011 was editor of the international literary/political biannual Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. For many years she worked as a librarian and teacher and as director of religious schools in various Jewish denominations. Kinberg has been an organizer in the lesbian, feminist, and anti-war movements for more than 40 years. Her writing on Jewish culture, the Jewish Labor Bund, and Israel/Palestine has appeared in Tablet, Sh’ma, Bridges, and Detroit Jewish News, and many other publications.

Lisa Heineman has been at the University of Iowa since 1999 and teaches courses on Germany, Europe, gender, and human rights. Her research has examined gender, war, and memory; welfare states in comparative perspective; the significance of marital status for women; the erotica industry; gender and human rights; and pregnancy and infant loss; and the politics of maternal health care. Professor Heineman received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993.  She is the 2010 recipient of the AICGS/DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies and the 2011 recipient of the New Millennium Writings Award in Non-Fiction.