Jay Neugeboren – författare

Prize-winning novelist Jay Neugeboren's third collection of short stories focuses on Jews in various states of exile and expatriation-strangers in strange lands, far from home. These dozen tales, by an author whose stories have been selected for more than fifty anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories, span the twentieth century and vividly capture brief moments in the lives of their characters: a rabbi in a small town in New England struggling to tend to his congregation and himself, retirees who live in Florida but dream of Brooklyn, a boy at a summer camp in upstate New York learning about the Holocaust for the first time, Russians living in Massachusetts with the family who helped them immigrate. In "The Other End of the World," an American soldier who has survived life in a Japanese prisoner of war camp grieves for members of his family murdered in a Nazi death camp, and in "Poppa's Books" a young boy learns to share his father's passion for the rare books that represent the Old World. "This Third Life" tells of a divorced woman who travels across Germany searching for new meaning in her life after her children leave home, while both "His Violin" and "The Golden Years" explore the plight of elderly Jews, displaced from New York City to retirement communities in Florida, who struggle with memory, madness, and mortality. Set in various times and places, these poignant stories are all tales of personal exile that also illuminate that greater diaspora-geographical, emotional, or spiritual-in which many of us, whether Jews or non-Jews, live.

In "Imagining Robert", Jay Neugeboren told the sad, deeply personal, often harrowing story of one man and one family's struggle with chronic mental illness. Now, he presents an overview of the entire field: a clear-eyed, articulate, comprehensive survey of our mental health care system's shortcomings and of new, effective, proven approaches that make real differences in the lives of millions of Americans afflicted with severe mental illness. A book for general readers and professionals alike, "Transforming Madness" is at once a critique, a message of hope and recovery, and a call to action. Filled with dramatic stories, it shows us the many ways in which people who have suffered the long-term ravages of psychiatric disorders have reclaimed full and viable lives.

Jay Neugeboren and his brother, Robert, grew up in Brooklyn in the years following World War II. Both brothers-smart, talented, and popular-seemed well on the way to successful lives when, for reasons that remain ultimately mysterious to this day, Robert had a mental breakdown at age nineteen. For the past forty years Jay has been not only his brother’s friend and confidant, but his sole advocate, as Robert continues to suffer from the ravages of the illness that has kept him institutionalized for most of his adult life.Imagining Robert tells the story of these two brothers and how their love for one another has enabled both to survive, and to thrive in miraculous, surprising ways. It is the most honest book yet on what it is like for the millions of families that must cope, day-by-day and year-by-year over the course of a lifetime, with a condition for which, in most cases, there is no cure. By never giving up hope and by valuing his brother’s uniqueness and humanity, Jay Neugeboren reveals how even the grimmest of lives can be sustained by the power of love.A film based on Imagining Robert aired on PBS nationally in 2003. With a new afterword that brings readers up to date on Robert’s life, Rutgers University Press is pleased make this highly praised book with its inspiring story available once more to the public.

A real-life mystery of books and basketball.Frankie King was a precocious student and a promising basketball player at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School in the early 1950s. Sportswriters were comparing Frankie to the greatest college and professional players of all time, and he was recruited as a starting guard at the University of North Carolina. But Frankie dropped out before playing a single game.This graphic novel follows King’s enigmatic life from its auspicious start in the limelight to his very reclusive existence in New York City, where he authored more than forty novels, including a popular series of cozy cat mysteries written under the pseudonym Lydia Adamson. Whatever Happened to Frankie King is the story of a unique and sometimes troubled life as well as a meditation on dreams realized, lost, and abandoned.

In this bewitching tale, fictional characters,the African American couple Horace and Joleen Littlejohn, interact with a real historical character, boxing champion Max Baer. Presenting themselves as husband and wife, Horace and Joleen are, in fact, brother and sister. They become constant companions and sometime lovers to Max in this story about Max's life in and out of the ring.