Cynthia Ozick facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Cynthia Ozick
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| Born | April 17, 1928 New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Education | Hunter College High School New York University (BA) Ohio State University (MA) |
| Period | 1966–present |
| Notable awards | American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1988 |
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Cynthia Ozick (born April 17, 1928) is an American writer. She is well-known for her short stories, novels, and essays. Her work often explores themes of Jewish American life and identity.
Contents
About Cynthia Ozick
Early Life and Education
Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City on April 17, 1928. She grew up in the Bronx. Her parents, Celia and William Ozick, were Jewish immigrants from Russia. They owned a pharmacy in their neighborhood.
She attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan. After high school, she earned her college degree from New York University. She then studied English literature at Ohio State University. There, she focused on the novels of a famous writer named Henry James.
Family and Legacy
Cynthia Ozick was married to Bernard Hallote, a lawyer, until he passed away in 2017. Their daughter, Rachel Hallote, is a history professor at SUNY Purchase. She also leads the Jewish studies program there. Ozick is the niece of Abraham Regelson, who was a scholar of the Hebrew language.
Yale University has collected her important writings and papers. A special issue of Studies in Jewish American Literature has examined her contributions to non-fiction writing.
What Cynthia Ozick Writes About
Main Themes in Her Work
Cynthia Ozick's stories and essays often explore Jewish American life. She also writes about politics, history, and literary criticism. She has written and translated poetry too.
The writer Henry James is very important in her fiction and non-fiction. One critic, Adam Kirsch, noted that her long-time engagement with Henry James is clear in her novel Foreign Bodies. This book is a new take on James's novel The Ambassadors.
Exploring Identity and History
The Holocaust and its effects are also major themes in her work. For example, in her essay "Who Owns Anne Frank?", she writes that the true meaning of Anne Frank's diary has been changed. She believes it has been misunderstood by various interpretations. Much of her writing looks at how people rebuild their identity. This includes experiences like immigration, dealing with difficult events, and moving between different social groups.
She has also written about Jewish feminism. In her 1976 essay “Notes Toward Finding the Right Question,” she discussed new ideas in Jewish feminist thought. She argued that women's inequality was not in the ancient texts, but in the way religious laws (called halakha) were interpreted. Her essay “Torah as the Matrix of Feminism” argued that the ideas for feminism and gender equality come directly from the teachings of the Torah.
Why She Writes
Ozick says that writing is not a choice for her. She describes it as "a kind of hallucinatory madness." She feels she must write no matter what. She finds "freedom in the delightful sense of making things up." But she also feels the "torment" of writing. When her collection of stories and essays, In a Yellow Wood, was published, Ozick spoke about the "profound joy of writing." She said this happens "when you're carried away by unexpected forces."
Awards and Recognition
Major Awards and Honors
Cynthia Ozick has received many awards for her writing. In 1971, she won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and the National Jewish Book Award for her short story collection The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories. She received The National Jewish Book Award for Fiction again in 1977 for Bloodshed and Three Novellas. In 1997, she won the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for Fame and Folly. Four of her stories have also won first prize in the O. Henry competition.
In 1986, she was the first person to win the Rea Award for the Short Story. In 2000, she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Quarrel & Quandary. Her novel Heir to the Glimmering World (2004) was highly praised by critics. Ozick was considered for the 2005 Man Booker International Prize. In 2008, she received the PEN/Nabokov Award and the PEN/Malamud Award. The Malamud Award honors great short story writers. Her novel Foreign Bodies was also nominated for the Orange Prize in 2012 and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize in 2013.
Praise from Other Writers
The novelist David Foster Wallace called Ozick one of the greatest living American writers. She has been described as "the Athena of America's literary pantheon." She has also been called the "Emily Dickinson of the Bronx." Many consider her "one of the most accomplished and graceful literary stylists of her time."
See also
In Spanish: Cynthia Ozick para niños
- Jewish American literature
