Mimi Schwartz is an award-winning, socially conscious American author, educator, and public speaker. More…
Latest Book
Ten years after the publication of Good Neighbors, Bad Times, Mimi Schwartz received a letter from Max Sayer who, in 1937, had moved into an abandoned Jewish home five houses away from where her father’s family had lived for generations. Sayer, a Catholic, wrote an unpublished memoir about his childhood memories and in Schwartz’s new edition, Good Neighbors, Bad Times Revisited, the two memoirs talk to each other. Weaving excerpts from Sayer’s memoir and her yearlong correspondence with him into her book, Schwartz revisits village history from a new perspective, deepening our understanding of decency and demonization.
“Mimi Schwartz reminds us how close we are (in time, in danger, in sentiment) to the horrific past, but that, even then, individual stories from everyday people show us grace and goodness and generosity despite the suffering.” —Patrick Madden, author of Disparates
“The meaning of ‘neighbor’ gains an utterly new dimension.” —Alicia Ostriker, poet laureate of New York State