Silk Elegy

Paterson, New Jersey, once the silk weaving capital of the United States and a center of radical unionism, provides the setting for a narrative poem by Gash. Through these connected poems, told in the voices of three members of a Jewish family at the start of the last century, Gash weaves a story about the immigrant sweatshop laborers who left their indelible mark on this mill town, while she unravels a story of family madness, love and sacrifice.