Okay I want to slap whoever told me this was just "you know, a fantasy folklore retelling of something that kinda felt Russian." I would have read this SO MUCH sooner if I had known it was about pogroms and antisemitism pre-World War II! I feel so betrayed and now I can't even remember who told me so I can't cut them out of my life.

How have I just been randomly stumbling into books that talk about racism and bigotry without knowing it recently? Like I JUST read [b:The Downstairs Girl|33224061|The Downstairs Girl|Stacey Lee|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1542719671l/33224061._SY75_.jpg|53929589] thinking it was about a newspaper opinion column and then got slapped with 300+ pages of America being racist as hell to Chinese immigrants.

I honestly really think more books like this are needed. I did a degree in European history that covered a variety of centuries and geography (with a specific focus on Russia and WWII). People seriously do not comprehend how longstanding antisemitism is. It wasn't just the Nazis in World War II that suddenly were like "hey! why don't we blame the Jews?!" There's just so much geopolitical and cultural conflicts that are still going on today that started over a thousand years ago. The infusion of the bear and swan were really interesting and did help break up a pretty difficult topic but it also fit in with the tone and geography of the book.

I also was not aware that a bunch of this presented in a format like most books written in verse (i.e. I thought it would take me like triple the time to read)
Rep: Eastern European Jewish folklore and characters