Elisa New Discusses Her Memoir, Family History

In a departure from a typical book reading, English professor Elisa New—who spoke to a small audience at Harvard Hillel yesterday night—read from her book in different accents and voices to fully capture the dynamic personalities of the characters in her memoir.

“There’s my little girl!” said New in a high pitched voice, reading an anecdote from “Jacob’s Cane: A Jewish Family’s Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore.”

New said she was inspired to write her memoir—which was published last month—after she came across her great-grandfather’s cane, which she had seen in family photographs her whole life.

“I felt the plates of history shift,” she said. “I felt that this cane was my pointer, my guide, to Jewish times I really knew nothing about.”

The book unites three diverse stories all belonging to her Jewish ancestors: her roots in Lithuania, the immigration of her great-grandfather’s family to Baltimore, and the re-immigration of three of his sons back to London to make their fortunes as cigarette magnates.

“I think that the book is poetic and really demands to be heard in voice,” said Harvard Hillel Director Bernard Steinberg. “To hear her embody the voice of her aunts really filled in a missing dimension.”

New spent nearly ten years traveling, researching, and amassing personal details about her family’s history in preparation for the book.

She explained that the information-gathering process was a family affair, involving her daughters and three aunts—Jean, Fanny, and Myrtle.

“Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy to get information out of my three aunts,” New said, laughing. “They mostly liked to talk about hors d’ovueres and how that girl looked so ‘bee-yoo-ti-ful.’”

New joked that she was worried that her research would never end until her friend, who was editing a chapter of the book entitled “Beautiful Machines,” helped her focus in on the core of the story she was telling.

“‘You can’t have a chapter about machines,’ she told me,” New said. “She reminded me that this was a story about people.”

New said she experienced a “strange satisfaction and feeling of peace” through her exploration of the many threads weaving her family history together.

At the end of her talk, one of New’s second cousins, Jack Abrams, thanked New in front of the audience and urged the crowd to keep their family stories alive by talking to their children.

“There are complete holes in family histories,” he said. “It’s been fascinating to see Lisa connect some of the dots.”

New is married at present to Director of the National Economic Council and former University President Lawrence H. Summers.