Neither Fish nor Fowl: A Mercantile Jewish Family on the Rio Grande (Modern Jewish History) - Softcover

Riskind, Morris S.; Riskind, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1682832309 ISBN 13: 9781682832301

Publisher: Texas Tech University Press, 2024

Synopsis

Neither Fish nor Fowl: A Mercantile Jewish Family on the Rio Grande is the memoir of Morris Riskind, who was born and lived most of his life in the small Texas border town of Eagle Pass. Riskind's parents, Michael and Rachel, were Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in Eagle Pass in 1910, where Michael founded a clothing store that three generations of his family operated for nearly a century.

After Michael's retirement in the 1950s, Morris took over management of the store, which had become a local institution catering to and employing a wide variety of the area's residents, including Anglos and Latinos, US and Mexican residents.

As the themes of Jewish identity, family business, and the borderland intersect in the Riskind store, they provide the foundation of Morris Riskind's memoir, which, although set mostly in one small Texas city, chronicles Riskind's vast life experience. The book's interest lies in Riskind's distinctive point of view, the many ways in which his life diverged from the expected norms of both American Jewish history and borderland society. This lively, far-ranging story depicts not only a family, a business, and a very small Jewish community but an altogether neglected facet of the American Jewish experience.

About this title

About the Author

Morris S. Riskind was born in 1911 in Eagle Pass, Texas, a Rio Grande border town about 140 miles southwest of San Antonio. His parents, Russian Jewish immigrants, arrived there the previous year from Chicago and opened a large retail clothing store on Main Street. Morris grew up in the family apartment above the store. For three generations, the Riskinds were at the heart of the town's small but active Jewish community and of its lively and multilingual downtown commercial district. Riskind died in 2006, but his memoir preserves his recollections of how Jewish identity, family business, and the border environment intersected in a small binational community.

Bryan Edward Stone is a professor of history at Del Mar College, where he teaches courses in US history and was named the 2019 recipient of the Aileen Creighton Award for Teaching Excellence and the 2021 Teacher of the Year. He is the author of The Chosen Folks: Jews on the Frontiers of Texas and the editor of Alexander Gurwitz's historical memoir Memories of Two Generations: A Yiddish Life in Russia and Texas. He lives in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Edition details

• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1682832309
• ISBN 13: 9781682832301
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Stone Bryan Edward