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Jewish Literary Voices: A Federation Series in collaboration with The Jewish Book Council

Trailblazing writer, publisher, and social-justice activist Zoe Anderson Norris (1860-1914) published her own magazine, The East Side, calling for the world to alleviate the wretchedness of Manhattans newly arrived immigrants, especially Eastern European Jews. Sometimes reporting undercover dressed as a beggar, she documented how refugees fleeing pogroms navigated perilous Ellis Island checkpoints and eked out livings in unheated tenements. The East Side raged against predatory landlords, corrupt policemen, incompetent charity executives, sweatshop owners (including the owners of the doomed Triangle Shirtwaist Factory), and all manner of xenophobes.

Zoe (as everyone called her) set out, in her words, “to fight for the poor with my pen.” This first biography of her by Eve Kahn explores how Zoe improbably found her calling—she was a Kentucky belle turned restless Kansas housewife before settling on New York’s Lower East Side; how she sympathetically portrayed Jews at a time of social upheaval and virulent antisemitism; and how her work resonates in our own tumultuous times.

Purchase the book HERE and a portion of the proceeds will be donated back to a local independent bookstore in the Berkshires.