The Great Depression Diary of Sally Cohen
Toronto, Ontario 1932
by Perry Nodelman
ISBN: 978-0-439-96130-1 Hardcover
224 pages
Ages 9-11
5 ½" x 7 5/8"
Coping with being poor during the Depression is hard enough, but Sally also has to deal with the anti-Jewish feelings in her community when she ventures outside her familiar Jewish neighbourhood. And her cousin Benny is always getting into scrapes Sally has to try to get him out of. Sally must find the strength and learn to cope with the world around her.
An Excerpt from Sally's Diary
March 9
Today in school we were supposed to be working on our arithmetic problems but I got distracted and started thinking about not sticking to your own kind, because of course we always do. I mean, I talk to Rivka and some of the other Jewish girls all the time, but none of us ever talk to any of the goyishe girls. And of course they never talk to us, they just look down their noses at us when they pass by like they were smelling a bad smell or something. I guess we do the same to them, too, but still. Some of those girls have been in my class right through school all the way from Junior One, and I know their names from the roll call and what colour their hair is and what kinds of dresses they wear, but that’s all I know about them. I know more about the Jewish boys, for heavens’ sake, and of course we hardly ever talk to any of them, either.
Maybe it would be interesting to know some of the goyishe girls, even just a little. The one I’d really like to know is Myoshi Ukeda. I know she lives just a block away, over on Bellevue, because I see her walking there on the way home from school. And she looks so strange and interesting and exotic, like Madame Butterfly in the opera in the book Sophie got from the library about operas. I wonder what it’s like in her house and what kind of food they eat.
She’s the only Japanese girl in the whole neighbourhood. I don’t think she even has any sisters or brothers. She always plays by herself and walks home by herself. She must be so lonely.
But of course I can’t just go up to her and start talking. What would she think? What would Rivka or the other girls think? And I could never talk to Myrtle MacDonald, even if we like the same things, because who knows, a goyishe girl like her might come from a family who thinks Jews should all be rounded up and sent back to the old country. She might think so herself. I could never do it. I guess I don’t even really want to.
But still, I sort of wish I did.
If I did and that horrible policeman saw us, he’d have a conniption fit.
From Dear Canada: Not a Nickel to Spare, copyright © 2007 by Perry Nodelman.
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