{"title":"Brenda Serotte","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"fortune-teller-s-kiss-book-brenda-serotte-9780803243538","title":"The Fortune Teller's Kiss","description":"There was always the incantation: Whoever wishes you harm, may harm come to them  And just in case that didn't work, there were garlic and cloves to repel the Evil Eye-or, better yet, the dried foreskin from a baby boy's circumcision, ground to a fine powder. But whatever precautions Brenda Serotte was subjected to, they were not enough. Shortly before her eighth birthday, in the fall of 1954, she came down with polio-painfully singled out in a world already marked by differences. Her bout with the dreaded disease is at the heart of this poignant and heartbreakingly hilarious memoir of growing up a Sephardic Jew among Ashkenazi neighbors in the Bronx. This was a world of belly dancers and fortune tellers, shelter drills and vast quantities of Mediterranean food; a world of staunchly joined and endlessly contrary aunts and uncles, all drawn here in loving, merciless detail. The Fortune Teller's Kiss is a heartfelt tribute to a disappearing culture and a paean to the author's truly quirky clan, especially her beloved champion, her father. It is also a deft and intimate cultural history of the Bronx fifty years ago and of its middle-class inhabitants, their attitudes toward contagious illness, womanly beauty, poverty, and belonging. Brenda Serotte is a poet and an adjunct professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications, such as Atlanta Review, Kit-Kat Review, Quarter after Eight: A Journal of Prose and Commentary, and Fourth Genre, from which her chapter Contagious was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49887173542161,"sku":"GOR013807450","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50361267880209,"sku":"CIN0803243537A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50361269944593,"sku":"CIN0803243537G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0803243537.jpg?v=1761389516"},{"product_id":"fortune-teller-s-kiss-book-brenda-serotte-9780803243262","title":"The Fortune Teller's Kiss","description":"A tribute to a disappearing culture and a paean to the author's beloved champion, her father. It presents the cultural history of the Bronx and of its middle-class inhabitants, their attitudes toward contagious illness, womanly beauty, poverty, and belonging.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50361264177425,"sku":"CIN080324326XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50366041162001,"sku":"CIN080324326XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/080324326X.jpg?v=1750882696"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-brenda-serotte.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}