David Slucki is an assistant professor in the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program at the College of Charleston. He is the author of The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Toward a Global History and co-editor of In the Shadows of Memory: The Holocaust and the Third Generation.
This, to me, is the main essence of the book - what we call in
Yiddish Di Goldene Keit (the Golden Chain). The passing
down, from father and mother to child, all that it is to be Jewish.
Beyond religion, beyond nationality, beyond culture. It is what
every Jewish parent is faced with, particularly in the
post-Holocaust era. The author is clear about this - he's
sub-titled the book A Memoir of Fathers and Sons. And while
the project likely started as a therapeutic exercise - his father
Charles passed away suddenly less than four years ago - I think it
quickly transformed into something more worldly.-- (01/28/2020)
For a book with so much sadness at its center, Sing This at My
Funeral is surprisingly wholesome. . . . even the most charmed
life is not insulated from the ripples of trauma, and Slucki's
memoir had me sobbing more than once. It deftly illustrates the
difficulty of healing history's traumas and the challenge of
maintaining that historical connection into the future. Sing
This at My Funeral illustrates how personal silences can easily
become amplified by communal history, even in the best of times.--
(01/17/2020)
Sing This at My Funeral is a compelling memoir, crafted with
great artistry: an eloquent meditation on fathers and sons, the
forces that shape them, and the impact of grief and trauma over the
generations. Slucki acts as both subject and witness, intimate
participant and historian, skillfully interweaving the past and the
present, the personal and the political, and the old world with the
new. This riveting quest for understanding is, above all, a
profound act of familial love and humanity.-- (04/08/2019)
Sing This at My Funeral is a passionate-and
visceral-meditation on trauma, memory, loss, and legacy. In urgent
yet intimate prose, David Slucki provides a memoir of his beloved
late father and grandfather and, using his own life as a fulcrum,
explores the impact of their lives and loss on his own identity.
Probing wounds still raw after years-or decades, he unflinchingly
raises questions that in many cases have no answers. What, he
wonders, will his own young son inherit from this family history of
Holocaust, immigration, political engagement, and love?--
(04/08/2019)
Brick by loving brick, Slucki builds a lyrical bridge of time, over
which ghosts, dybbuks, and specters of memory may come to pass.
Sing This at My Funeral is more than a son's tender tribute
to a remarkable man. It is a profound meditation on what it means
to father and be fathered.-- (04/08/2019)
David Slucki's memoir is a gutsy reckoning with ghosts. Like the
best stories, Sing This at My Funeral features complex
characters and a curious narrator who is not afraid to keep
digging. Slucki's voice is compassionate, sharp, and relentless. A
page-turning family narrative that is both highly personal and
highly relatable.-- (04/08/2019)
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