The word “shanda” is defined as shame or disgrace in Yiddish. In her astonishingly candid memoir, author, activist, and Ms. magazine founder Letty Cottin Pogrebin seeks to understand the role of shame and secrecy in a family of devout Jewish immigrants whose social status — in America and even among one another — required the calculated concealment of a number of uncomfortable truths. Beginning with her own long-suppressed secret, the story spirals through the hidden lives of her parents and relatives—revealing the truth about their origins, personal traumas, marital misery, abandoned children, religious transgressions, sexual identity, radical politics, and illnesses.