Ruth Behar facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Ruth Behar
Born	Cuba
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Princeton University Wesleyan University
Scientific career
Fields	Cultural Anthropology
Institutions	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Ruth Behar is a writer and an anthropologist from Cuba and America. An anthropologist studies people, cultures, and societies. Ruth writes books, poems, and stories. She believes that researchers should be open about their own feelings and experiences when they study people. She won the Belpré Medal for her writing.

About Ruth Behar's Life and Work

Ruth Behar was born in Havana, Cuba into a Jewish family. When she was four, her family moved to the US. This happened after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. Many Jewish families and others left Cuba at that time. Ruth went to school in the US. She earned her first degree from Wesleyan University in 1977. Later, she studied cultural anthropology at Princeton University. She received her doctorate degree in 1983.

Ruth often travels to Cuba and Mexico. She studies different parts of their cultures. She also explores her family's history in Cuba. She has focused on learning about the lives of women in developing countries.

Ruth Behar is a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her books and writings are part of the Michigan Writers Series. As a writer, she focuses on topics about women and feminism. She writes anthropology books, essays, poems, and fiction.

Ruth Behar's Book: Lucky Broken Girl

Lucky Broken Girl (2017) is a novel for young adults. It is about growing up and features different cultures. The story is based on Ruth Behar's own childhood in the 1960s.

The main character, Ruthie Mizrahi, and her family moved from Cuba to New York City. Ruthie was just starting to feel confident speaking English. She was also the best at hopscotch in her neighborhood. Then, a bad car accident left her in a body cast. She had to stay in bed for a long time to get better.

Because she could not move, Ruthie's world became smaller. But her ability to notice things and her heart grew bigger. She learned how precious life is. She also understood how important friends, neighbors, and art can be. These things can make even the hardest times better.

One reviewer said that Ruth Behar always tries to honor her own history and feelings. But she also includes the experiences of others. This is clear on every page of Lucky Broken Girl. Another professor noted that Ruth Behar uses her own background. She is a Cuban American with Jewish roots from different countries. This helps her write stories that feel very real and true to life.

Ruth Behar's Book: Traveling Heavy

Traveling Heavy (2013) is a memoir. A memoir is a true story about a part of someone's life. This book is about Ruth's Cuban-American family. Her family includes Jewish people from different parts of the world who lived in Cuba. The book also tells about strangers who helped her on her life journey.

Ruth explores her complex Jewish Cuban family history. She also writes about her family's move to America. This helps her understand questions about identity and belonging. One review called her book "A heartfelt witness." It showed the changing feelings and politics of the Cuban-American experience. Ruth studies the renewed Jewish life in Cuba as an anthropologist. But her personal journey back to the island she left as a child is the main part of this book.

Ruth Behar's Book: An Island Called Home

Ruth Behar wrote An Island Called Home (2007). She wanted to better understand Jewish life in Cuba. She especially wanted to learn about her family's roots. She said, "I knew the stories of the Jews in Cuba, but it was all about looking at them as a community."

Ruth traveled around the island. She became a trusted friend to many Jewish strangers. This helped her build connections for more research. She did one-on-one interviews. She also used black-and-white photos. This helped her show readers how Cuban Jews are connected to each other around the world.

The book starts with Jewish immigrants from the 1920s. They left Turkey, Russia, and Poland because of problems there. Then, it tells stories of later immigrants. These were Polish and German Jews who came to Cuba in the 1930s and 1940s. They were escaping harm and concentration camps from the Nazis. In Cuba, these immigrants opened small shops. They also sold goods on the streets. They slowly learned Spanish while still speaking Yiddish. They settled into Latino life in Old Havana. In the early 1900s, many Jewish immigrants worked in Cuba's clothing industry.

More than 94% of Jewish people left Cuba during and after the 1959 revolution. Ruth's family was among those who left. So, she shares her personal thoughts and feelings. She also includes her professional observations about Cuban society today.

Ruth Behar's Book: The Vulnerable Observer

The Vulnerable Observer tells how Ruth Behar started including personal feelings in her studies. While studying funeral customs in Spain, her grandfather passed away. This made her realize that researchers cannot be completely separate from their subjects. She decided they needed to become "vulnerable observers."

She believes that researchers should understand their own feelings. They should work through how they feel about the people they are studying. She strongly disagrees with the idea of being completely objective. She felt that a "scientific," distant way of presenting information was not complete. Other anthropologists also suggested that researchers should be more open about their role. Ruth Behar's six personal essays in The Vulnerable Observer show her personal approach.

Ruth Behar's grandparents moved to Cuba from Russia, Poland, and Turkey in the 1920s. In 1962, they left Cuba to escape Castro's communism. When Ruth was nine, she broke her leg in a car crash. She could not move for a year. This experience helped her realize that "the body is a homeland." It holds memories and pain.

Ruth Behar's Book: Translated Woman

In 1985, Ruth Behar was working in Mexico. She became friends with an Indigenous woman who sold things on the street. This woman was called Esperanza Hernandez. People in the town said Esperanza had used magic to blind her ex-husband. He had often hurt her and then left her for another woman.

Ruth Behar's story of Esperanza in Translated Woman suggests that Esperanza upset her own mother. This inspired Ruth to show Esperanza as a strong, independent woman. Esperanza said she found peace in a spiritual group. She blamed her anger about her husband and life for the deaths of her first six children. Ruth Behar thinks about her own life. She starts to believe her conflicts as a Latina-gringa come from a feeling of loss. She felt she had tried to live the "American Dream." In doing so, she felt she lost some connection to her Cuban Jewish family's past. Esperanza's journey explores different kinds of boundaries and separations. Translated Woman helps the argument that studying women in anthropology has been undervalued. This is because traditional academic views often see studies focused on women as too personal.

Awards and Honors

• In 1988, Ruth Behar was the first Latina woman to receive a MacArthur fellowship. This is a special award given to talented people.
• In 2011, she gave a Turku Agora Lecture.

See also

• Cuban American literature
• List of Cuban-American writers