Chapter Two Blues Diva Bayla could never say when she first heard the blues. Perhaps their wail and words penetrated thin apartment walls in her tenement building overrun with German and Hungarian immigrants. Or maybe during Augusts' stifling heat, the deep soulful sounds of the blues oozed from a radio or a record player out an opened window. Blues came to her gentle and easy with a certainty in their lingering, and a mounting up that spoke to her the more …
The Artfulness of Women – a forthcoming novel by Naomi Weiss
~ Synopsis ~ Determined to escape New York City tenement life, Bayla Szabo born of Jewish Hungarian immigrants yearns to be a blues singer like her heroines, Bessie Smith and Mar Rainey Abandoned by her father, she supports herself and her mother by sewing in a factory during the Depression, but at night, sexy and seductive, she performs to rowdy male audiences in a former speakeasy on Manhattan's West Side. While her mother's Old Country superstitions threaten her resolve, Bayla marries into a …
Bronx Girl – Excerpt 4 of 4
This post's content is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir 'Bronx Girl'. It was published on Splice Today as 'I Was the Outsider Looking In': http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/i-was-the-outsider-looking-in. One day my father picked me up from playing with my cousin Arlene at Aunt Dora’s house just outside of Parkchester and carried me most of the long walk home on his shoulders. High above the rest of the world, it felt extraordinary and never left my memory. As soon as he opened the …
Bronx Girl – Excerpt 3 of 4
This post's content is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir 'Bronx Girl'. It was published on Splice Today as 'Loving Mother Anyway': http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/loving-mother-anyway. Some months after my third birthday, I committed an offense for which my mother decided required punishment. I don’t know if she pondered what she did ahead of time in preparation for a lesson I’d never forget, but in those days, irons were not in a solid state where the cord that plugs into the wall …
Bronx Girl – Excerpt 2 of 4
This post's content is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir 'Bronx Girl'. It was published on Splice Today as 'Learning I Have a Father': http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/learning-i-have-a-father. When I was barely 15 months old, with WWII raging, the U.S. Army realized it was running out of men to fight Nazis. So they drafted my 35-year-old father on May 17, 1943. Despite years of experience selecting suitable men for the armed forces, they failed to recognize their mistake—expecting my …
Bronx Girl – Excerpt 1 of 4
This post's content is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir 'Bronx Girl'. It was published on Splice Today as 'The 12 O'Clock Siren': http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/the-12-o-clock-siren. Whenever my mother told the story, she always began with, “You were supposed to be born January 23.” I hadn’t entered the world yet and already I’m wrong. “On Friday, Christmas Day,” she’d say, “your father gets this idea to visit his Hungarian cousins, Morris and Irna, in Queens. You know what a …