Bubba Esther, 1888

Ruth Whitman

1980

Sensitive Content

This text recounts acts of sexual violence. The text provides insight into Jewish history; however, The Posen Library does not condone or promote sexual violence or oppression of any kind.

She was still upset,

she wanted to tell me,

she kept remembering

his terrible hands:

how she came, a young girl

of seventeen, a freckled

fairskinned Jew from Kovno

to Hamburg with her uncle

and stayed in an old house

and waited while he bought

the steamship tickets

so they could sail to America

and how he came into her room

sat down on the bed…

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Creator Bio

Ruth Whitman

1922–1999

Born in New York and then living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ruth Whitman explored her Jewish and American heritage in poems and translations. An instructor at Radcliffe College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she served as the poetry editor of the Radcliffe Quarterly and received numerous awards for her writing, including the Alumnae Recognition Award from Radcliffe, the Bunting Fellowship, and awards from the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Bubba Esther, 1888

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Bubba Esther, 1888

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