“Many of the classic women’s melodramas produced in Holly wood studios were adapted form best sellers written by women. The male directors who specialized in this lowly genre have been elevated to the movie canon and their movies are widely accessible through theatrical screenings, video rentals, and DVD sales, but the female authors have been forgotten and their works have been long out of print. . . . Finally, after 50 years of neglect, the tide appears to be turning.” - Freda Freiberg , Screening the Past
"As Daniel Itzkovitz speculates in his incisive introduction to the reissue, Hurst may have been more comfortable exploring her relationship to her own Jewish identity through black characters such as Peola; her childhood shame over be in Jewish closely resembles Peola's over being black. . . . Hurst should be remembered as a Great American Storyteller, and one who did extraordinary things with the form." - Kate Bolick , nextbook.org
“Although it’s a ‘white’ novel, Imitation of Life is certainly a part of the African American canon. No film was more important to me as a ‘colored’ child growing up in West Virginia; the funeral scene has to move even the most stoic viewer to tears. Now this new edition of the novel brings this richly layered story back into public view, where it will, I hope, remain.” - Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University
“Daniel Itzkovitz’s brilliant edition of Imitation of Life places this controversial novel at the center of U.S. literary, cinematic, and social history. Fannie Hurst’s novel deserves to be read in its own right, but here its importance as a register of white anxieties about the ethics of American racism and of consumer fantasies for overcoming the particular body are also showcased richly.” - Lauren Berlant, author of The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship
“This new edition of an influential American classic—one of the first books in twentieth-century popular literature to grapple with issues of gender and race—is reason enough to celebrate, but Daniel Itzkovitz’s splendid and insightful introduction reclaims for Fannie Hurst a preeminent position as an essential American literary figure whose work matters today more than ever.” - Michael Bronski, author of The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom
