I am seeking representation for my second book, “The Meshugene Effect” - a 100000-word epistolary hybrid memoir of loss, remembering, and hunches.
When I was little, my great-grandmother used to call me “meshugene.” I knew it meant “crazy,” or more precisely, “a crazy person.” I also understood that it was her term of endearment, and I was proud to hold the exclusive title in our family. Of course, I had no idea at the time that it was a Yiddish or that Yiddish was a language spoken by Jews. To us, this quirky nickname was simply part of our family vernacular—something we all understood without ever questioning its linguistic or cultural origins.
When, as a teenager, I developed an irrational conviction—a mere hunch—that I was Jewish, my family thought it was absurd. Yet, for the next two decades, I pursued a Jewish life based solely on that instinct. It wasn’t until the secret of a shocking deathbed confession made by my great-grandma twenty years earlier was finally revealed to me that I realized my hunch had been a good one all along.
The biggest revelation came when I discovered that there were others like me—people who had inklings of Jewish ancestry and were eager to share their stories. Together, we began to make sense of the unknowns we had inherited.
It was then that I realized I had been harboring another silence. After failing to cope with my brother’s death, I spiraled into post-traumatic stress and quietly suppressed the fact that I was gay.
But I finally knew what I needed to do. In a somewhat transgressive act, I decided to address the book in its entirety to my dead brother, ruffling the feathers of my family’s unprocessed grief and making some noise against all of the silence.
The Meshugene Effect is an unconventional genre-bending book of absolutely no fiction that should resonate with anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one. It will be particularly relevant for readers interested in the complexities of Jewish identity. It should appeal to anyone engaged in Polish-Jewish history and relations. I imagine it will also be intriguing for folks with an affinity for road trips and anyone nearly as obsessed as I am with the White Sands Desert in New Mexico.
* The title of the book contains a Yiddish word that translates to the no doubt fraught English word “crazy”. However, “meshugene” is used here as a direct quote and in a contextualized and non-stigmatizing way.
When I was little, my great-grandmother used to call me “meshugene.” I knew it meant “crazy,” or more precisely, “a crazy person.” I also understood that it was her term of endearment, and I was proud to hold the exclusive title in our family. Of course, I had no idea at the time that it was a Yiddish or that Yiddish was a language spoken by Jews. To us, this quirky nickname was simply part of our family vernacular—something we all understood without ever questioning its linguistic or cultural origins.
When, as a teenager, I developed an irrational conviction—a mere hunch—that I was Jewish, my family thought it was absurd. Yet, for the next two decades, I pursued a Jewish life based solely on that instinct. It wasn’t until the secret of a shocking deathbed confession made by my great-grandma twenty years earlier was finally revealed to me that I realized my hunch had been a good one all along.
The biggest revelation came when I discovered that there were others like me—people who had inklings of Jewish ancestry and were eager to share their stories. Together, we began to make sense of the unknowns we had inherited.
It was then that I realized I had been harboring another silence. After failing to cope with my brother’s death, I spiraled into post-traumatic stress and quietly suppressed the fact that I was gay.
But I finally knew what I needed to do. In a somewhat transgressive act, I decided to address the book in its entirety to my dead brother, ruffling the feathers of my family’s unprocessed grief and making some noise against all of the silence.
The Meshugene Effect is an unconventional genre-bending book of absolutely no fiction that should resonate with anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one. It will be particularly relevant for readers interested in the complexities of Jewish identity. It should appeal to anyone engaged in Polish-Jewish history and relations. I imagine it will also be intriguing for folks with an affinity for road trips and anyone nearly as obsessed as I am with the White Sands Desert in New Mexico.
* The title of the book contains a Yiddish word that translates to the no doubt fraught English word “crazy”. However, “meshugene” is used here as a direct quote and in a contextualized and non-stigmatizing way.
