Mourning and Celebration - K David Brody

Have you ever wondered how life would have been, had you been born one hundred years earlier? Mourning and Celebration is how author K. David Brody answers that question. Yankl lives in a 19th-century Polish shtetl. And he's gay. Within the framework of conversations with his alter ego who lives in a 19th-century Polish shtetl, the narrator learns how a gay, Orthodox Jew like himself managed to emerge from the social pressures of his community. Yankl is a brilliant scholar, a talented violinist, an only son and gay. Although blessed with social skills, he feels isolated as a young teenager. Subsequently, we follow his development through intense relationships with his family, rabbis and lovers. This is is a story of a personal search for validation and human rights, in a context where that concept was not yet understood.