" By the Waters of Paradise is both an intimate memoir and a history of racism, religion, and politics, Kinberg reveals her aunt's story with sensitivity. She discovers the jagged intersections of Jewish and Black history in the United States, where white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and capitalism delimited each group's opportunities in turn?and sometimes in startlingly entangled ways."?Lila Corwin Berman, professor of history and of Hebrew and Judaic studies, New York University "The question of who we are always invokes questions of whom we come from, when and where we live, and how we make choices within circumstances we don't choose. Through the life of an independent-minded aunt she never met, Clare Kinberg explores generations of Jewish, Black, and lesbian life. In her deft hands, one family's history resounds as a quintessential story of the American century."?Robin Bernstein, author of Freeman's Challenge "In seeking to bring the hidden story of her deceased Aunt Rose to light, Clare Kinberg illuminates her family's?and the nation's?history and, along the way, sheds a great deal of light on our present moment. With a keen eye on the roles that race, sexuality, and religion played in the story of Aunt Rose's life, Kinberg compellingly weaves together personal, local, national, and global histories while offering profound meditations upon the complicated nature of family and identity. By the Waters of Paradise blends archival research, family lore, and imaginative speculation together in the richest possible way.

"?Robert Erlewine, director, Eastern Michigan University Center for Jewish Studies " By the Waters of Paradise is truly a beautiful, poignant, and well-researched book. The segregation and lesbian narratives weave and undergird both this Jewish family story and the niece-aunt connection."?Shonda Buchanan, author of Black Indian (Wayne State University Press) and The Lost Songs of Nina Simone "Why did Clare Kinberg, who formed an interracial family of her own, not know about her father's sister, her Aunt Rose, who did the same thing fifty years earlier? In this moving memoir, Kinberg solves that mystery as she explores African American and Jewish history to discover the Jewish roots of her strong moral opposition to anti-Black racism?an opposition that she found lacking in her father's house. By the Waters of Paradise is an illuminating and nuanced account that brings the reader to a deeper understanding of identity, race, religion, gender, and power in the lives of Black and Jewish Americans."?Rebecca Alpert, professor emeritus of religion, Temple University "Quietly, Clare Kinberg takes us on a profound revelation of the pervasive codes of racism and usurpations that shaped her birth family, and how deeply American it all is. A blurred image of her Aunt Rose, the shunned daughter of a loving Jewish family in the 1940s, leads Kinberg on a journey into the thick layerings of displacement?familial and national?that American racism demanded and still does. In answer, we find vibrant Black communities of memory, new familial promises, a more complex national self. It is a personal search into a family exile that is profoundly national.

"?Joan Nestle, author of A Restricted Country and A Fragile Union.