Exploring Jewish Assimilation and Racism

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore returns to Between the Covers to talk about her remarkable new book, Touching the Art. A mixture of memoir, biography, criticism, and social history, Touching the Art is above all a complicated love letter to Mattilda’s grandmother, abstract artist Gladys Goldstein. Through an exploration of Mattilda’s love for Gladys’ art, Touching the Art becomes a book about so many things—women in abstract expressionism, queer identity and homophobia, structural racism and white flight, antisemitism and Jewish assimilation into whiteness, family gaslighting and middle class norms, and dreams and visions of solidarity and liberation both in the world of art and in the world.

For the bonus audio archive, Mattilda contributes a reading of the first chapter of their future book Terry Dactyl. To find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page.

And here is today’s Bookshop.

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