LITR 4333: American Immigrant Literature

 Student Text-Objective Discussion 2006

Tuesday, 4 April: Jewish-American: Chosen People in the New World. Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers (1925)

·        Text-objective discussion leader: Matasha A. Lewings

Background information:

In Bread Givers, we meet Sara Smolinsky, a woman determined to have choice in her life rather than readily accepting the bread giver role that her father and her traditions are inflicting upon her.

Bread Givers is semi-autobiographical.  Like Sara, Anzia immigrated to the United States when she was young.  At the age of 8 years old, her, her father, and her eight siblings grew up very poor in the Jewish ghetto on New York’s Lower East Side.  Also, like Sara, Anzia left home at 17, against her father’s wishes, to get an education.  Five years later, she published her first book.

 

OBJECTIVES

OBJECTIVE 2D:  Character by generation:  What are the standard associations or identities of distinct generation?

  1. First-generation as “heroic” but also “clueless”
    1. Dad seen as a hero in the eyes of the community
    2. Pg. 19
    3. Dad’s readiness to believe in the good in everyone
    4. Pg. 119
  1. Second-generation as divided between traditional identities of homeland or ethnic group and modern identity of assimilated American.
    1. traditional identity – pg. 202
    2. modern identity – pg. 138

OBJECTIVE 4:  To observe cultural variations in the Immigrant Narrative by different nations, at different historical periods, or under different national conditions.

            Jewish immigrants came to America because of persecution.  They have also, until, recently, resisted the urge to assimilate into dominant culture, hanging on to their old traditions and culture.

                        pg. 13

 

OBJECTIVE 5:  To observe and analyze the effects of immigration and assimilation on cultural units or identities.

  1. Here, three key identities (gender, community and laws, and religion) often overlap in the book. 
  1. Instead of addressing them individually, I just created a list of passages and how these identities are evident in the passages, dividing them by old world and new world values.
  1. Old world
    1. pg. 9/10
    2.  pg. 64
    3. pg. 124
  1. New world
    1. pg. 48
    2. pg. 66
    3. pg. 255

OBJECTIVE 8:  To monitor the importance of public education to the assimilation stage of the immigrant narrative.

  1. pg. 211
  2. pg. 238
  3. pg. 241

QUESTIONS

  1. What do you think made Sara different from her sisters?  Why was the American dream so much more real and so much more important to her?

 

  1. What are your thoughts on the father?

 

  1. Do you think that Sara ever fully assimilated? Why/why not?

 

  1. What would be your definition of “bread giver?”