The Oxford Companion to American Literature | Yezierska, Anzia
Yezierska, Anzia( 1885–1970), Russian-Jewish immigrant, among the most noted Jewish-American writers in the period 1920–32, during which time this former schoolteacher and housewife published two short story collections and four novels about the struggles of Jewish immigrants on New York's Lower East Side. Yezierska's first collection, Hungry Hearts (1920), contained her most famous story, Fat of the Land, which not only gives a feminist view of the often futile fight against poverty but also explores the difficult choice of Jewish women between a quest for self-determination or a submission to Old World patriarchy. Her best novel, Bread Givers (1925), had a similar theme of self-liberation. Sara Smolinsky rebels hard against her tyrant father, an unsuccessful teacher of Hebrew, then works through night school and college to become a schoolteacher. Still not fulfilled, Sara marries the principal of her school, who then...
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