Remember to Eat and Other Stories by Meryl Ain; Brooklyn, New York: Spark Press imprint of Stable Book Group; © 2026; ISBN 9781684-633401; 201 pages plus glossary and acknowledgments; $17.99.
SAN DIEGO – Five generations of Jewish women are depicted in this fictional collection of 22 short stories about their hopes, frustrations, and triumphs.
Two generations are mentioned in passing: that of Marjorie’s grandma Sadie, a traditional homemaker, and Marjorie’s granddaughter Jessica, a youngster who prefers squishmallows to Marjorie’s collection of dolls.
Marjorie, a post-World War II baby boomer, is the focus of the majority of stories which recall distinct periods of her life:
–Being assigned to the highest spelling group in 3rd grade.
–Puzzling over why a high school classmate disappeared after writing an essay about what her parents did in the war.
–Encountering antisemitism in college and dating a man who “ghosted” her after he became a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana.
–Being discouraged from applying to law school because she was a woman, and discouraged from running for office because she was a shomer Shabbos Jew.
–Panicking when she becomes separated from her twin toddlers on a shopping trip.
— Becoming jealous of a friend who has published a fourth book based on recollections of a life that was parallel to Marjorie’s own life.
–Fearing she will become stereotype of a meddling mother-in-law when she protests that Adam’s younger sister Deborah was not included in the wedding party of Adam and his fiancée Cara.
–Agonizing with her friend Bobbi whose ba’al teshuvah son moves to Israel and marries a young woman on the same religious path. A telling crisis intervenes when Bobbi needs a kidney transplant.
–Grieving over the death of her mother Alice, who was a close confidant. Feeling lonely because her husband Eric works all the time, she is tempted to have an affair.
–Moving to winter quarters in Florida from New York after her husband survives a heart attack.
–Spending too much time on social media and being scammed by a woman she met on Facebook.
–Attending the Democratic National Convention as an alternate delegate and meeting television personalities who fail to live up to their images.
–Meeting a woman who has lived to 103 and is still going strong, and eliciting her philosophy of getting old.
The other two people whom author Meryl Ain profiles are Marjorie’s daughter Deborah, whose material success is accompanied with a sense of entitlement, and Alice, Marjorie’s mother, who served in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) during World War II. She witnessed the horrors of Dachau as an Army journalist. She was horrified after the war when a fellow customer at the hairdresser’s minimized Jewish suffering under Hitler.
Alice declines to enroll Marjorie in the testing phase of the Salk anti-polio vaccine, but relents once the vaccine is proven effective.
Alice takes a public relations job with a local hospital. She devises a successful campaign, but who gets the credit? Her male supervisor, who had very little to do with it.
This book is a kaleidoscope of the changing roles of women in an evolving society and the distinct problems faced by Jewish women.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor and publisher of San Diego Jewish World.