Sample Student final answers 2013 (2013 final exam assignment) #1: Research Reports

LITR 4333     American Immigrant Literature (Model Assignments)

Carrie Block

Anzia Yezierska

            After reading “Soap and Water” by Anzia Yezierska, and learning of the struggles that women faced in the turn of the century in America, I was intrigued and curious to find out more about its author and her life.  Even though I am not of the Jewish persuasion I felt a symbolic connection to her writing and could relate as a woman. Anzia Yezierska gave a voice to her people and Jewish immigrant life at the time. “As a writer, Yezierska believed “her mission was to mediate between her culture and the dominant culture of America” (Ebest) Below I will be giving you a brief biography of her, her works and their importance to American Immigrant Literature.

            Anzia Yezierska was born in the Russian Polish village of Plinsk, near Warsaw, sometime between 1880 and 1885. Anzia did not know her exact date of her birth but her daughter suspects that she perpetually reinvented her history in interviews claiming to be younger. She surmises this was done to compensate for her late start as a writer.  Anzia was the youngest of nine children. The Yezierska family arrived in the United States in the early 1890’s although her oldest brother, Meyer, arrived several years earlier.  Upon his arrival American Immigration officers changed his name to Max Mayer, replacing his first with a version of his last name. When the Yezierska family arrived they too were given the last name Mayer and Anzia was given the first name Harriet or Hattie. She later came back to the real name Anzia Yezierska when she was around twenty-eight. Once here in America the family settled into a cramped tenement apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. (Horowitz)

            Anzia’s father, Baruch, was a fulltime scholar of sacred texts or a Talmudic scholar, due to this was not gainfully employed.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/anzia_yezierska) This meant that the title of bread winner often fell to her mother, Pearl. Pearl worked menial jobs to support her family and put bread on the table. Because of the pressure to help support her struggling family, Anzia only attended elementary school for two years and was forced at working a succession of domestic and factory jobs while her brother were encouraged to pursue a higher education. (Horowitz) Anzia married Jacob Gordon, a lawyer, in 1910 only to apply for annulment the following year. A year later she married Arnold Levitas, a teacher and text book writer, and gave birth to their daughter Louise Levitas in 1912. In 1916, the couple divorced and Anzia moved to San Francisco to become a social worker. Unable to support herself and her daughter she had to send Louise back to live with her father at the age of five this lead to a close but troubled relationship with her daughter Louise. In 1917, Anzia met the great romance of her life, John Dewey, and despite the age difference, he was fifty-eight and she was in her thirties. She wrote about their romance in “All I Could Never Be”.  (Horowitz)

            Yezierska is best known for her fictional portrayal of Jewish immigrant life in New York’s Lower East side.  The main themes of her writings seem to be the costs of assimilation and acculturation among immigrants. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/anzia_yezierska) Her work generally features a female protagonist and explores her transition from immigrant “greenhorn’ to American and their struggle with poverty, patriarchy, and the Jewish practices. She emphasizes their need for acceptance, independence, and prosperity in the New World, She often pays particular attention to woman saddled with child care, crowded conditions and being utterly financially dependent on husbands, all things that I can relate to as a fellow woman. Anzia’s first work was published in 1915 and called “The Vacation House”. This book was loosely based on her sister’s experience and focused on the humiliation inflicted on poor women by well-intentioned charitable organizations. (Horowitz)

            She later went on to write “Where Lovers Dream”, “The Fat of the land” and “Hungry Hearts” in which the story of “Soap and Water” appears. With “Hungry Hearts” she captured the attention of a Hollywood. The movie producer Samuel Goldwyn brought her to Hollywood and made her a screenwriter. In 1920 he made “Hungry Hearts” into a silent movie. Her Hollywood career didn’t end there as her work “Salome of the Tenement” was her next story to hit the big screen but being removed from her culture she felt blocked and returned to an economically struggling New York. In 1925, Anzia wrote her most studied and critically acclaimed work “Bread Givers”. In “Bread Givers” Anzia writes of a young woman, Sara Smolinsky, struggling to live day to day as a Jewish immigrant in New York, while the work is fictional there are direct correlations to Anzia’s life and family. The story spoke of the ways of the Jewish family, education and religious study was the realm of the mean, while the daughters were sent to work in factories to help supplement the household earnings. (Moon)

            Though interest in her work diminished in the 1920’s she continued to write. In 1932 she wrote “All I Could Never Be” which focused on her desire to be an American but unable to reach this status because she sees herself as an immigrant. This was the last of her novels that she wrote before falling into obscurity. In 1950, her fictionalized autobiography was published “Red Ribbon on a White Horse”. She was nearly 70 years old by this time and it lead to renewed interest in her work. She wrote her last novel “The Open Cage” in 1962 at the age of 81. It was one of her bleakest pieces as it compared her life to that of an ailing bird. Anzia continued to write even though she was blind up to her death in 1970. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/anzia_yezierska)      

            Anzia Yezierska has been a profound, prolific writer of the immigrant narrative. She has relentlessly documented the struggles and strife’s of immigrant life, particularly that of the Jewish immigrant worker, and the cost of assimilation and acculturation in the immigrant narrative. Her stories have provided us with a reflective and poignant insight to the meaning of liberation and independence for female immigrants, which as a woman I can relate and connect with on a symbolic level. To do this she frequently drew upon her own life experiences in New York’s Lower East Side which in result aided her mission to intertwine her immigrant culture with the Dominant Culture of America.