Corie Adjmi
Tuesday, November 14 • 7pm
@coriesuttonadjmi
@corieadjmi (Instagram)
The Marriage Box
In this crisp coming-of-age novel, Corie Adjmi courageously takes on a subject close to her heart, and one that has not yet been told through the female lens: the world of the Jewish Syrian girl.
Casey Cohen, Adjmi’s teenage protagonist, has been raised by Syrian Jewish parents in the secular city of New Orleans. When she is caught engaging in dangerous adolescent behavior, her alarmed parents decide to move the family back to the tight-knit Brooklyn community from which they came — a world that is structured, safe, and highly controlled. Casey is summarily yanked out of her New Orleans prep school and enrolled in an ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn yeshiva, a religious school where boys and girls learn in separate classrooms and the overriding ethos is “marriage trumps college.” The marriage box is an actual place behind a swimming pool where single Syrian girls lounge on display. “They pose in flattering positions, lying on their backs to keep their stomachs flat, flaunting their freshly waxed tan legs, hoping to attract their naseeb, their God-given intended.”
About the Author:
Corie Adjmi is the author of the short story collection Life and Other Shortcomings, which won an International Book Award, an IBPA Benjamin Franklin award, and an American Fiction Award. Her essays and short stories have appeared in dozens of journals and magazines, including HuffPost, North American Review, Indiana Review, Medium, Motherwell, Kveller, and others. The Marriage Box is Corie’s first novel. She is a mother and grandmother and lives and works in New York City.
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