SOURCE: "Identities within Identity: Thoughts on Jewish American Women Writers," in Studies in American Jewish Literature, No. 3, 1983, pp. 6-10.

In the following essay, Sochen describes the defining quality of the Jewish-American woman writer as her continual effort to forge a personal and creative identity.

It is said that the twentieth century is the time in which artists and philosophers are preoccupied with the issue of identity. Perhaps so, but one could argue that Jews have always been obsessed with the question: "who am I?" Living as marginal, separate people throughout most of their history, they have always been required to be introspective collectively and individually. Identity has been an especially vital, active issue in the life of Jewish Americans where the interaction with Gentiles is commonplace. Jews raised within the Jewish tradition must question, test, and confirm their identities, their links to the Judaic past and present, and...