Terrific ... Unearths the story of a Jewish political movement that opposed ethnic nationalism of all stripes and that fought antisemites head-on — sometimes literally beating them on the head ... An authoritative history ... Thrillingly energetic ... Ultimately, Crabapple wants to offer inspiration, not prescription.
Crabapple’s book is written for this moment. More than translating Bundist theory from Yiddish, she puts it into the language of today’s left ... Here Where We Live Is Our Country is not a caricature of the Bund, nor a work of fan fiction; it’s a deeply researched portrait ... Poetic and noble ... Crabapple doesn’t spell out what the Bundist response would be today; she leaves that to the reader. What she does is resurrect a buried political tradition in a way her Bundist heroes would appreciate: not just in book form, but in the streets for everyday Brooklyn bus riders.
In 380 lush, high-tempo, strikingly poignant pages, interspersed with her own illustrations of its key characters, Crabapple documents the Bund’s extraordinary rise and fall ... The reader feels her kinship with her characters; her own experience as an activist – often wrestling with the same big questions, enduring the same small discomforts and painful deflations – enables a rare empathy ... The relevance of her material for our present moment is impossible to ignore.
Crabapple’s book is called Here Where We Live Is Our Country, and it is framed as the story of the Jewish Labor Bund’s twin battles against Nazis and nationalism. It is, then, a fictional story. The idea behind the title is key to much of the commentary on the book and its subject: that Jews thought of their homeland as wherever they were. What Bundists meant by this, however, is lost on the Bund’s modern-day admirers.
Brilliant evocation of the anti-Zionist Jewish Bund, a beacon of hope for a renewed left ... A superb blend of personal and social history, alive with radical spirit.
Deeply affecting ... Writing with lyricism and great depth of feeling, Crabapple movingly presents the principled Bund, decimated by the Holocaust and sidelined postwar by Soviet socialism on one side and Zionism on the other, as 'a candle to illuminate the tumultuous present.' Readers will be rapt.
