Being a member of a minority is never easy. Especially when we face multiple external pressures to fit in with the larger culture.
In 2015, Alyssa R Petersel published her first book, Somehow I Am Different: Narratives of Searching and Belonging in Jewish Budapest. The book is a non fiction anthology of what it is be a Jew in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary. Interviewing 21 individuals, Ms. Petersel, an American woman of Jewish descent, explores what it means to be Jewish, especially in a city that has lived through Nazism and Communism.
What made this book so fascinating is that the people the author interviewed are no different than any group of individuals living in a big city. There is a universal quality to this book. One could, hypothetically speaking, change the religion and the location of the interviewees and the stories would more or less be the same.
Do I recommend it? Yes.
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