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Review

New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust

Edited by Matthew Silverman and Howard Debs

‎Vallentine Mitchell
ISBN: 978-1803710266

Review by John Brantingham

New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust is a book that asks contemporary poets and writers to react to images from the Holocaust. It opens with a discussion between Anna Ornstein, a psychologist and Holocaust survivor, and Joy Ladin, a poet and literary scholar, discussing all aspects of Holocaust studies. They begin with the question of whether people should be writing about the Holocaust at all, questioning the very premise of the collection. This kind of inquiry captures the spirit of the work. The idea behind the book is that it is not enough simply to not forget the Holocaust.

We must learn from it. In fact, it is important that we keep on learning and relearning, that we need to reevaluate it with the wisdom that we have gained by growing as a society. The problem with writing about the Holocaust is that it can become unreal. It might become cartoony and disrespectful to those who suffered because of it. New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust, however, self-consciously fights against that notion by this updated understanding of the lessons of the Holocaust and by making sure to stress that this is not exclusively a Jewish problem, but a human problem; that not only can it happen again, it does happen over and over in much smaller ways, and we as a society need to be aware of and struggle against. Stephen Sher’s “Physiognomy 101” is an excellent example of how these lessons are updated for a greater understanding of what is happening today. Sher reacts to a photograph of a class on racial theory taken in the 1930s; however, he uses ideas from today to respond to it. He writes from the point of view of a college professor: “My directness violates their ‘safe space.’ I provoke them by my mere presence. When one coed sees that I am her professor, she flees from the class the very first day and never returns” (47). Sher confronts the idea that shielding college students from certain ideas or people is another way to control them. This was certainly true in the Holocaust when information went through a genocidal filter, but by putting it in modern language, he is highlighting dangerous trends of the present. He speaks of the danger of social media and focuses later in the piece on how the concept of truth is manipulated. “An accuser stands each day out on the quad recruiting student with grand gestures and with charm, a bullhorn exhorting another ‘big lie,’ engaging faculty who soon embrace him, planting the seeds of solidarity, filling their heads with horrors done to those he loves” (48). Sher develops an argument with his flash fiction about the danger of having a media and intellectual base willing to dismiss facts when those facts are politically inconvenient. Few of the poems or stories in the book so directly attack current problems by calling them out in the way that Sher does, but they certainly all are written from a modern sensibility, so this is not a mere recitation of the events, but a living discussion of how our society is priming itself for another possible genocidal event. New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust does not limit itself to a discussion of antisemitism but makes the point that all forms of hatred must be resisted, that when one group is isolated and attacked, we all are. Geoffrey Philp in “Flying African,” in particular, does so. In this poem, he explores the life of Jesse Owens and what he had to go through in Germany and America as he is othered. He addresses Owens directly about how he helped to prove racism to be foolish by winning the gold medal:
But on that day you exposed the lie that had stalked you’re through segregated hotels and rest rooms with signs that read, “Whites Only” (57).
Philp points out here that this is not only a German or Jewish problem. It is a human problem. It is the problem of not being able to see all people as being the same and as having the same humanity. That point is furthered by the editorial selection of writers and poets. These are from multiple religions, nations, ethnicities, gender identities, and sexual identities. The editors consciously chose multiple points of view so that we might understand hatred in as many ways as we could. It took me a long while to read New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust. It is intellectually and emotionally exhausting to confront hatred in its many forms, but that work is a necessary part of retaining my humanity. I do not expect to have a perfect understanding of the topic, and the collection does not claim to give the reader anything like that. What it does hope to do is to continue this necessary conversation, to keep confronting this kind of evil as we move and grow as a society.

About the Author

John BrantinghamJohn Brantingham was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been featured in hundreds of magazines, Writers Almanac, and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has nineteen books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction including Life: Orange to Pear, Kitkitdizzi, and Days of Recent Divorce. He is the founder and general editor of The Journal of Radical Wonder. He lives in Jamestown, NY.

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