Shakespeare Reference in Bending Toward The Sun

Bending Toward The Sun is a memoir dealing with Holocaust survival and how the stress of that time has been passed down to succeeding generations. And it contains a reference to Hamlet. Leslie Gilbert-Lurie writes: “They may see me as being too protective of my mother, or perhaps ignorant of the possibility that my guilt is by-product of repressed anger. But at the risk of protesting too much, I simply say that I am grateful that Mom did her best; that she did it with grace, intelligence, and all of her heart” (p. 306). The phrase “protesting too much” is a reference to Gertrude’s line “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Bending Toward The Sun was published in 2009. The first Harper Perennial Edition was published in 2010.