The Punk-Rock Queen of the Jews: A Memoir (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781647426972)

This is Rossi's wild, queer coming-of-age story. Rossi was taught only to aspire to marry a nice Jewish boy and to be a good kosher Jewish girl. At sixteen she flowers into a rebellious punk-rock rule-breaker who runs away to seek adventure. Her freedom is cut short when her parents kidnap her and dump her with a Chasidic rabbi--a "cult buster" known for "reforming" wayward Jewish girls--in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Rossi spends the next couple of years in a repressive, misogynistic culture straight out of the nineteenth century, forced to trade in her pink hair and Sex Pistols T-shirt for maxi skirts and long-sleeved blouses and endure not only bone-crunching boredom but also outright abuse and violence.

The Punk-Rock Queen of the Jews is filled with wonderfully rich characters, hilarious dialogue, and keen portraits of the secretive hothouse Orthodox world and the struggling New York City of the 1980s: dirty, on the edge, but fully vital and embracing.

Author: Rossi
ISBN-10: 1647426979
ISBN-13: 9781647426972
Publisher: She Writes Press
Language: English
Published: 04/23/2024
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.43h x 5.43w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
PW Booklife Reviews 04/08/2024
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/0001