Rachel Calof's Story

by Rachel Calof | Biographies & Memoirs |
ISBN: 0253209862 Global Overview for this book
Registered by winghyphen8wing of Honolulu, Hawaii USA on 1/31/2017
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by winghyphen8wing from Honolulu, Hawaii USA on Tuesday, January 31, 2017
This is not an ordinary book: it's a BookCrossing book! BookCrossing books are world travelers - they like to have adventures and make new friends...and every once in a while they even write home to say what they've been doing.

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From the 4 for a dollar shelf at Book-Off.

Subtitle: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains

Rachel Bella Kahn was a Russian immigrant who came to the US in 1894 to marry Abraham Calof. This is her story of the early years of their life together as they homesteaded in North Dakota.

This book, published in 1995, includes an epilogue by one of Rachel's sons and essays by J. Sanford Rikoon (volume editor) and Elizabeth Jameson.

Journal Entry 2 by winghyphen8wing at Honolulu, Hawaii USA on Tuesday, January 31, 2017
TBR, but reserved for round 5 of booklady331's US Non-Fiction VBB. If someone claims it, I'll have to finally read it or decide that I'm not going to. Either way, this book will hopefully see some action soon.

Journal Entry 3 by winghyphen8wing at Honolulu, Hawaii USA on Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Claimed from the VBB by BooksandMusic: I've just started reading one book, but this one will be next!

Journal Entry 4 by winghyphen8wing at Honolulu, Hawaii USA on Thursday, February 23, 2017
Wow: definitely not Little House on the Prairie here...but what a priceless gift Rachel Bella Calof gave to her descendants by writing down her own story (in Yiddish). Otherwise, after a couple of generations the details of her struggles would probably have been lost to history, and that would have been a shame.

It was the subtitle on this one that grabbed me: I don't normally think of Jewish immigrants homesteading - most of the time their experience is presented as an urban one. So the two follow-up essays, while a bit dry, were enlightening too.

It seems to me that homesteading was enough of a challenge for people like the Ingalls family who belonged to the mainstream American culture: for Orthodox Jews who spoke limited English to try it? That took real guts.

Fascinatingly, someone's done a musical of Rachel's story.

I'll count this as my 2017 North Dakota read for NancyNova's 2017 50 States reading challenge.
2017 states read (10/51): AL AZ CA IN MA MS NY ND TX VT

I'll also count this for the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge: "#5. Read a book by an immigrant or with a central immigration narrative."

Journal Entry 5 by winghyphen8wing at Honolulu, Hawaii USA on Thursday, February 23, 2017

Released 7 yrs ago (2/23/2017 UTC) at Honolulu, Hawaii USA

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Thursday, February 23, 2017: headed for Seattle as part of booklady331's US Non-Fiction VBB.

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Journal Entry 6 by BooksandMusic at Seattle, Washington USA on Monday, February 15, 2021
I found Rachel's account amazing. I can't even imagine how difficult it must have been to be a homesteader in N. Dakota in the 1880's. They had very inadequate housing, heat, fuel, food and clothing. If you survived all that you still had a terrible load of daily work and very iffy chances of success. On top of that these people were isolated from almost any community other than the people they lived with. Rachel is feisty, smart and admirable. I really liked her and appreciated her manner of speaking which was plain spoken and real.
I appreciate that her story was made available to readers.

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