Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets

How much do we really know about the lives of our parents and the secrets they’ve kept in their past? How do we delineate fiction from fact in our family histories? What parts are real and what parts have we needed to be real? Many people may wonder, but few actually embark on a quest to uncover the truth. Judy Bolton-Fasman, one among the rare few who have done it, was brave enough to recount in a gripping memoir her search for the familial mysteries that have haunted her life. The beloved arts and culture writer for JewishBoston.com, Bolton-Fasman joins her colleagues Miriam, Ashley and Kali to speak about her mesmerizing book debut, “Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets.” Tune in as we discuss the juxtaposition of her Sephardic and Ashkenazi identities, the jaw-dropping revelations she discovered about her parents and what it’s like to become a 60-year-old literary debutante. Learn more at and To reach out to us, email podcast@jewishboston.com. Produced by Miriam Anzovin and edited by Jesse Ulrich, with music by Ryan J. Sullivan.

You can listen to Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets is an episode from The Vibe of the Tribe by JewishBoston.com.

This episode is 00:34:28 long.

This episode was published on Oct 5, 2021.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from The Vibe of the Tribe when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.