Asked to write an opera based on immigrant stories, Leah Lax spends a year listening to riveting accounts of upheaval, survival, migration, and arrival told to her in confidence by new Americans from around the globe. In Not From Here, in between seven of these amazing stories, Leah discovers the story of her own Jewish family with its astounding parallels. The immigrant experience, she says, is the story of America. As a Jew, she recognizes the moving struggle in these stories to find some kind of cultural balance in their newly hyphenated identities. She calls doing so “dancing on the hyphen”…and quintessentially American. As a result of her year of listening, Leah finds context for her life and family as a Jewish-American and a gay person, and a deeper sense of home and belonging. She becomes somehow more American.
Nonfiction
Not From Here: The Song of America
- From the Publisher
September 1, 2021
Discussion Questions
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