Bread Givers
Anna Yezierska
The immigrant experience in America during the so-called Roaring Twenties was quite different than the middle-class jazz craze we tend to hear so much about in our history classes. I was thus intrigued by this rather unconventional novel, which depicts life in New York's Lower East Side Jewish ghetto during the period. It straddles between believable elements of tenement life and rather unrealistic expectations of the upward mobility of American society but finds its place as a coming-of-age tale.
The story of the book is one of a lonely Jewish girl, Sara Smolinsky, who watches her Old World father study Torah endlessly (and without income) while she, her mother, and her sisters struggle just to make ends meet, which of course they rarely do. After watching her sisters get married off one by one to men they do not love, Sara decides to reject tradition and heritage and find her place as an American. Sara shuns her family and struggles to make it through night school and an all-American college. Unfortunately for Sara, her stilted English, which comes through brilliantly in the narration, means that she can never make it as a genuine American. She comes, in time, to reaffirm her identity as an American Jew, although this is never quite defined properly in the novel and the ending makes the reader wonder whether Sara is actually happy with this newfound identity.
The novel sends some mixed messages, but these generally fit in with the plot's theme of confusion in the New World. How does one balance the customs of the shtetl with the chaos and squalor that is the Lower East Side? Why is it acceptable for the women in Sara's family to go out and work while they are generally considered worthless and completely dependent by Sara's father? The novel doesn't provide sufficient answers to these questions, but I would suggest that this adds to the novel's power. The reader is forced to go over these questions after putting the novel down.
Yezierska forces her readers to consider how an immigrant's new identity is created by describing a realistic environment of conflicting pressures. While Sara's Jewish father is over-the-top, he still manages to be believable as a reactionary bastion of tradition in the face of oppressing change. Sara's rise through the ghetto is a bit fanciful yet forgivable in light of the fact that the novel's ending is a question mark rather than a big group hug. Sara doesn't end up in misery, exactly, but in a way she comes full circle. Usually an unresolved plot line like this would drive me crazy, but in Anzia Yezierska's thoughtful novel the lack of a resolution gives the story power. This book paints a good picture of the darker side of the Roaring Twenties, and it is definitely worth a read.
Grade: A-
Anna Yezierska
The immigrant experience in America during the so-called Roaring Twenties was quite different than the middle-class jazz craze we tend to hear so much about in our history classes. I was thus intrigued by this rather unconventional novel, which depicts life in New York's Lower East Side Jewish ghetto during the period. It straddles between believable elements of tenement life and rather unrealistic expectations of the upward mobility of American society but finds its place as a coming-of-age tale.
The story of the book is one of a lonely Jewish girl, Sara Smolinsky, who watches her Old World father study Torah endlessly (and without income) while she, her mother, and her sisters struggle just to make ends meet, which of course they rarely do. After watching her sisters get married off one by one to men they do not love, Sara decides to reject tradition and heritage and find her place as an American. Sara shuns her family and struggles to make it through night school and an all-American college. Unfortunately for Sara, her stilted English, which comes through brilliantly in the narration, means that she can never make it as a genuine American. She comes, in time, to reaffirm her identity as an American Jew, although this is never quite defined properly in the novel and the ending makes the reader wonder whether Sara is actually happy with this newfound identity.
The novel sends some mixed messages, but these generally fit in with the plot's theme of confusion in the New World. How does one balance the customs of the shtetl with the chaos and squalor that is the Lower East Side? Why is it acceptable for the women in Sara's family to go out and work while they are generally considered worthless and completely dependent by Sara's father? The novel doesn't provide sufficient answers to these questions, but I would suggest that this adds to the novel's power. The reader is forced to go over these questions after putting the novel down.
Yezierska forces her readers to consider how an immigrant's new identity is created by describing a realistic environment of conflicting pressures. While Sara's Jewish father is over-the-top, he still manages to be believable as a reactionary bastion of tradition in the face of oppressing change. Sara's rise through the ghetto is a bit fanciful yet forgivable in light of the fact that the novel's ending is a question mark rather than a big group hug. Sara doesn't end up in misery, exactly, but in a way she comes full circle. Usually an unresolved plot line like this would drive me crazy, but in Anzia Yezierska's thoughtful novel the lack of a resolution gives the story power. This book paints a good picture of the darker side of the Roaring Twenties, and it is definitely worth a read.
Grade: A-
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