This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence and self-fulfillment resonates with a passion all can share. Beautifully redesigned page for page with the previous editions, Bread Givers is an essential historical work with enduring relevance.

A timeless American novel about an immigrant girl growing up on the Lower East Side who dares to challenge her Orthodox Jewish family’s narrow conceptions of a woman’s place in the world, featuring a new foreword by the author of the New York Times bestseller Unorthodox―the basis for the hit Netflix series―and cover art by New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck A Penguin Classic The youngest of four daughters in a family that left Poland in the 1920s for the crowded tenements of New York City’s Lower East Side, Sara Smolinsky has seen her sisters resign themselves, under their rabbi father’s iron fist, to loveless marriages and empty futures. They are “bread givers,� working to feed the family while their father studies the Torah―according to which, as their father reminds them, a woman without her father or husband is “less than nothing.� But Sara hungers for more. In defiance of her father, she breaks free, escaping home to see what the American dream holds for her in this poignant coming-of-age tale and striking portrait of feminist rebellion.

The story of a young, aspiring Jewish woman from the ghetto who will do anything to get her man in this case an upper-class WASP. When she discovers he is not really what she wanted, she will do anything to get away. Based on the real-life story of the Jewish immigrant activist Rose Pastor's fairytale romance with the millionaire socialist Graham Stokes, the novel also reflects Yezierska's own doomed romance with the famous educator John Dewey. Passionate and engagingly sardonic, it criticizes the concept of the American "Melting Pot" in the language of the Lower East Side and exposes the hypocrisy of the "good works" of the privileged class and their so-called dedication to the poor. Gay Wilentz's introduction discusses Anzia Yezierska's life and work. Originally published in 1923.  

This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence and self-fulfillment resonates with a passion all can share. Beautifully redesigned page for page with the previous editions, Bread Givers is an essential historical work with enduring relevance.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

In stories that draw heavily on her own life, Anzia Yezierska (1880-1970) portrays the immigrant's struggle to become a "real" American. Set mostly on New York's Lower East Side, the stories brilliantly evoke crowded streets, shabby tenements, poverty, and ethnic prejudice. These stories are still relevant today, except the ethnic backgrounds are Latino and Asian.

In stories that draw heavily on her own life, Anzia Yezierska (1880-1970) portrays the immigrant's struggle to become a "real" American. Set mostly on New York's Lower East Side, the stories brilliantly evoke crowded streets, shabby tenements, poverty, and ethnic prejudice. These stories are still relevant today, except the ethnic backgrounds are Latino and Asian.

In evoking the joy and pain of the Jewish immigrant experience, Anzia Yezierska has no peer. Her stories and novels, written from the 1920s to the 1960s, immortalized the Jews of New York's Lower East Side and their struggle to escape poverty and to partake of America's promise. How I Found America gathers together all of Yezierska's short fiction: the two collections published during her lifetime--Hungry Hearts and Children of Loneliness--and seven additional tales. Each story is authentic and immediate, as memorable as family history passed from one generation to the next. taken together, they constitute an enduring portrait of a time and a people.

The target of intense critical comment when it was first published in 1927, "Arrogant Beggar'"s scathing attack on charity-run boardinghouses remains one of Anzia Yezierska's most devastating works of social criticism. The novel follows the fortunes of its young Jewish narrator, Adele Lindner, as she leaves the impoverished conditions of New York's Lower East Side and tries to rise in the world. Portraying Adele's experiences at the Hellman Home for Working Girls, the first half of the novel exposes the "sickening farce" of institutionalized charity while portraying the class tensions that divided affluent German American Jews from more recently arrived Russian American Jews.
The second half of the novel takes Adele back to her ghetto origins as she explores an alternative model of philanthropy by opening a restaurant that combines the communitarian ideals of Old World "shtetl" tradition with the contingencies of New World capitalism. Within the context of this radical message, Yezierska revisits the themes that have made her work famous, confronting complex questions of ethnic identity, assimilation, and female self-realization.
Katherine Stubbs's introduction provides a comprehensive and compelling historical, social, and literary context for this extraordinary novel and discusses the critical reaction to its publication in light of Yezierska's biography and the once much-publicized and mythologized version of her life story. Unavailable for over sixty years, "Arrogant Beggar" will be enjoyed by general readers of fiction and be of crucial importance for feminist critics, students of ethnic literature. It will also prove an exciting and richly rewarding text for students and scholars of Jewish studies, immigrant literature, women's writing, American history, and working-class fiction.

In stories that draw heavily on her own life, Anzia Yezierska portrays the immigrant's struggle to become a "real" American, in such stories as "Yekl," "Hunger," "The Fat of the Land," and "How I Found America." Set mostly in New York's Lower East Side, the stories brilliantly evoke the oppressive atmosphere of crowded streets and shabby tenements and lay bare the despair of families trapped in unspeakable poverty, working at demeaning jobs, and coping with the barely hidden prejudices of their new land.

In evoking the joy and pain of the Jewish immigrant experience, Anzia Yezierska has no peer. Her stories and novels, written from the 1920s to the 1960s, immortalized the Jews of New York's Lower East Side and their struggle to escape poverty and to partake of America's promise. How I Found America gathers together all of Yezierska's short fiction: the two collections published during her lifetime--Hungry Hearts and Children of Loneliness--and seven additional tales. Each story is authentic and immediate, as memorable as family history passed from one generation to the next. taken together, they constitute an enduring portrait of a time and a people.