The Legitimacy of Intersections. Exploring Identity and Personal Truths in Letty Cottin-Pogrebin’s "Deborah, Golda, and Me. Being Female and Jewish in America"

Abstract

Letty Cottin-Pogrebin’s autobiography, Deborah, Golda, and Me. Being Female and Jewish in America, immerses the reader into the intersectional world of feminist writing. Pogrebin allows for different genres to cohabitate and create a deeply personal account. At times almost journalistic, at others taking the guise of persuasive activist essays, the work itself mirrors in its shape the theme at its very center: the exploration of identity, done outside of prescribed lines, in the three-dimensionality conferred by multi-faceted sides of the self. As such, Pogrebin brings under one roof former opposites, allowing them to meld together: feminism and religious observance; the personal and the political; motherhood and fatherhood. Identity is not an either/or endeavor, and Pogrebin makes the case for embracing hyphenation and the liberating force of self-definition.