A Jew in Ramallah and Other Essays

In a rich, diversified and international career, Carla Blank has been dramaturge, choreographer, stage director, writer, art and architecture critic, defender of women’s rights and of a multicultural America, and more. Fortunately, she has recorded much of her experience in essays now gathered in a single volume. From her role as stage director in Ramallah through a searing critique of bigotry on Broadway, the storming of the old boys’ citadel in architecture, a fine analysis of great women dancers and choreographers, such as the late great Suzushi Hanayagi, to the taking down of “ mainstream” cultural historians on abstract art and postmodernism, Carla Blank brilliantly puts words to what the “ocean” of multicultural America feels. In an exclusive interview with her partner Ishmael Reed, we learn how a curious young Jewish woman from Pittsburgh developed into a committed and eloquent public intellectual.