"An extension of Ribak's earlier work on Jewish relations with other European immigrant/ethnic groups, Crude Creatures is a significant and courageous work that shines critical, revisionist light on a master narrative in American Jewish history." - John J. Bukowczyk, Professor Emeritus of History, Wayne State University "The depiction of African Americans and Black Africans in Yiddish literature and culture has been much discussed but greatly misunderstood. Gil Ribak complicates a frequently oversimplified body of commentary that tends to congratulate Yiddish writers and artists for their sympathetic treatment of Black people while overlooking less salutary aspects of this story. Ribak's broad and deep research on such depictions in the Yiddish press, theater, literature, and other areas of Yiddish culture paints a complex and ambivalent picture of one minority people's treatment of another. The result makes for sometimes uncomfortable but always illuminating reading, of a story told with remarkable erudition and great flair." - Joel Berkowitz, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee "In this unvarnished, often troubling study, Gil Ribak reveals the degree to which negative - and often starkly racist images and perceptions of African Americans penetrated the Yiddish-language culture of Jewish immigrants in the United States during the early decades of the twentieth century. Revising a standard account that emphasizes Yiddish writers' empathy and identification with African Americans, Ribak paints a more complex picture, one that exposes the ambivalence and contradictions of acculturation and underscores the sway that America's racial culture held over European immigrants, even during their first years on these shores." - Eric L. Goldstein, author of The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity "Yiddish writers, from the 19th Century in Europe through World War III in North and South America, filled stories and poems with Black characters. Ribak takes on the difficult task of discussing these portrayals, many of which are deeply caricatured, crude depictions of the "other". Without whitewashing the images of Black men and women that appear in literature, Ribak seeks to better understand what became, by the interwar period, a significant genre." - Amelia Glaser, U.C. San Diego "Crude Creatures makes an outstanding contribution to the study of Black-Jewish relations in the twentieth century. Ribak complicates the popular narrative about the glory days of the Black-Jewish alliance by exposing the racist views found in American Yiddish culture. This objective, historical analysis serves as a powerful call to be ever vigilant against the danger of racial stereotypes." - Mark L. Chapman, Fordham University "Ribak has completed a thorough research work. His book is bursting with lively details from thousands of different sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English." – The Forward
