"...mediating youthful experience through adult recall..."

Carol Zemel reviews They Called Me Mayer July in a special issue of Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal 14:1 (2009):154-160, dedicated to fathers and daughters. Reprinted with permission. Subscribe to Bridges.

Like Herman Melville's "Call Me Ishmael," the salutary title of Mayer Kirshenblatt's They Called Me Mayer July sounds a ringing introduction to the figure who will guide us through a lively personal and cultural history. Though this is the story of a man looking back (Kirshenblatt was 91 when the book was published), the tale is told through the character of an adventurous, hot-headed (hence the nickname, after July's heat), and inquisitive adolescent—just the sort of guide the reader/viewer wants...Mediating youthful experience through adult recall, pictures like this invite careful perusal and discovery, and so demonstrate the importance of images in the formation of memory and memoir. Read whole review .