{"product_id":"the-fortune-tellers-kiss-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. This 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. The Fortune Teller's Kiss 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. Brenda Serotte is a poet and an adjunct professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications, such as Atlanta Review, Kit-Kat Review, Quarter after Eight: A Journal of Prose and Commentary, and Fourth Genre, from which her chapter \"Contagious\" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Nebraska Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/01\/2006\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780803243538\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 250\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.73lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.53h x 5.52w x 0.60d","brand":"Brenda Serotte","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42038489252021,"sku":"9780803243538","price":18.66,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_cead3469-300b-4e51-b7ba-1ae514048cd2.jpg?v=1649736281","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-fortune-tellers-kiss-9780803243538","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}