Neither Fish Nor Fowl

<i>Neither Fish nor Fowl: A Mercantile Jewish Family on the Rio Grande</i> is the memoir of Morris Riskind who was born and lived most of his life in the small Texas border town of Eagle Pass. Riskind's parents Michael and Rachel were Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in Eagle Pass in 1910 where Michael founded a clothing store that three generations of his family operated for nearly a century. <p>After Michael's retirement in the 1950s Morris took over management of the store which had become a local institution catering to and employing a wide variety of the area's residents including Anglos and Latinos US and Mexican residents. <p>As the themes of Jewish identity family business and the borderland intersect in the Riskind store they provide the foundation of Morris Riskind's memoir which although set mostly in one small Texas city chronicles Riskind's vast life experience. The book's interest lies in Riskind's distinctive point of view the many ways in which his life diverged from the expected norms of both American Jewish history and borderland society. This lively far-ranging story depicts not only a family a business and a very small Jewish community but an altogether neglected facet of the American Jewish experience.