In 'We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust,' Ellen embarks on a journey to connect with her Jewish family roots that expands into a wider quest, offering hope for a more tolerant future. 'Working 9 to 5' is her first-person account of how a racially diverse group of women took on the corporate titans, organized a union, won victories from coast to coast – and inspired Jane Fonda’s hit movie and Dolly Parton’s enduring anthem. How does a nation-how do successor generations, moral beings-overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in We Are Here, one woman's exploration of Lithuania's Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own family's place in it.ĭigging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to 'speak to a Jew' before he dies discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation-Cassedy finds that it's not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.Ellen Cassedy was a founder of 9 to 5, the movement of working women that mobilized for rights and respect on the job. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future.

Shortlisted for the 2014 Saroyan Prize.Įllen Cassedy's longing to recover the Yiddish she'd lost with her mother's death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the 'Jerusalem of the North.' As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after he'd left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Winner of the 2013 National Book Prize from Grub Street, the 2013 Towson Prize for Literature, the Silver Medal for History from the 2012 ForeWord Book of the Year Awards, the 2013 Prakhin International Literary Foundation Award, and the 2013-14 Best Book Award from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies.

We Are Here by Ellen Cassedy