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No. 71: An American Tail

The immigrants’ story, with fur

by
Marc Tracy
December 06, 2011

1986, dir. Don Bluth. It’s not A Jewish Tail. And Italian and Irish mice duly contribute verses to the seminal anthem, “There Are No Cats in America” (“and the streets are paved with cheese”). But that’s just the point: To tell the American tale of the persecuted mice from elsewhere making a life for themselves here—especially if you are, say, Executive Producer Steven Spielberg—you tell it through the story of the Mousekewitzes, from Minsk.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.