{"product_id":"the-fortune-tellers-kiss-brenda-serotte-9780803243538","title":"The Fortune Teller's Kiss","description":"There was always the incantation: \"Whoever wishes you harm, may harm come to them!\" And just in case that didn't work, there were garlic and cloves to repel the Evil Eye--or, better yet, the dried foreskin from a baby boy's circumcision, ground to a fine powder. But whatever precautions Brenda Serotte was subjected to, they were not enough. Shortly before her eighth birthday, in the fall of 1954, she came down with polio--painfully singled out in a world already marked by differences. Her bout with the dreaded disease is at the heart of this poignant and heartbreakingly hilarious memoir of growing up a Sephardic Jew among Ashkenazi neighbors in the Bronx. \u003cp\u003eThis was a world of belly dancers and fortune tellers, shelter drills and vast quantities of Mediterranean food; a world of staunchly joined and endlessly contrary aunts and uncles, all drawn here in loving, merciless detail.\u003ci\u003e The Fortune Teller's Kiss\u003c\/i\u003e is a heartfelt tribute to a disappearing culture and a paean to the author's truly quirky clan, especially her beloved champion, her father. It is also a deft and intimate cultural history of the Bronx fifty years ago and of its middle-class inhabitants, their attitudes toward contagious illness, womanly beauty, poverty, and belonging.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Brenda Serotte\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0803243537\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780803243538\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Nebraska Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/01\/2012\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 220\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.73lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.53h x 5.52w x 0.60d\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Brenda Serotte","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44054509519103,"sku":"9780803243538","price":21.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_e362db08-03ec-4e9f-9643-bb785d042626.jpg?v=1685030363","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-fortune-tellers-kiss-brenda-serotte-9780803243538","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}