Focusing on a diversely rich selection of writers, the pieces featured in Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative explores the community of
Jewish American writers who published their first book after the mid-1980s. It is the first book-length collection of essays on this subject matter with contributions from the leading
scholars in the field. The manuscript does not attempt to foreground any one critical agenda, such as Holocaust writing. Instead, it celebrates the presence of a newly robust, diverse, and
ever-evolving body of Jewish American fiction. This literature has taken a variety of forms with its negotiations of orthodoxy, its representations of a post-Holocaust world, its reassertion
of folkloric tradition, its engagements with postmodernity, its reevaluations of Jewishness, and its alternative delineations of ethnic identity. Discussing the work of authors such as
Allegra Goodman, Michael Chabon, and Tova Mirvis, the fifteen contributors in this collection assert the ongoing vitality and ever-growing relevancy of Jewish American fiction.
