The quest for self-expressionAnzia Yezierska’s portrayal of America as a fake golden country

  1. Campos, Rebeca E. 1
  1. 1 Universidad Complutense de Madrid
    info

    Universidad Complutense de Madrid

    Madrid, España

    ROR 02p0gd045

Aldizkaria:
Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

ISSN: 0210-6124

Argitalpen urtea: 2023

Alea: 45

Zenbakia: 1

Orrialdeak: 37-55

Mota: Artikulua

DOI: 10.28914/ATLANTIS-2023-45.1.03 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

Beste argitalpen batzuk: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

Laburpena

The aim of this study is to show how the experience of Eastern European Jewish women in America challenged the discourse of the American Dream that they had previously fabricated in their homelands at the turn of the twentieth century. As portrayed by the Polish-born American writer Anzia Yezierska, whose family migrated to New York at the time, these women initially aim their efforts towards achieving happiness through their belief that America provides equal opportunities for upward mobility. However, they eventually question their prospects of improvement and progress by creating their own Jewish American experience. In two of her short stories, “How I Found America” and “The Miracle,” Yezierska reproduces the hopelessness of her Jewish characters after they have faced the burdens of social exclusion and the classist policies of philanthropic programs of integration. Rather than completely assimilating American standards, the protagonists seek to build their own American experience while maintaining their Jewish cultural background, which paradoxically finds expression through institutional courses designed for newcomers.

Erreferentzia bibliografikoak

  • Antin, Mary. (1912) 1997. The Promised Land. USA: Penguin Books.
  • Antler, Joyce. 1997. The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America. New York: Schocken Books.
  • Baum, Charlotte, Paula Hyman and Sonya Michel, eds. 1976. The Jewish Woman in America. New York: Dial Press.
  • Billeter Sauter, Irene. 2011. New York City, “Gilt Cage” or “Promised Land”? Representations of Urban Space in Edith Wharton and Anzia Yezierska. Bern: Lang.
  • Cahan, Abraham. (1896/1898) 1970. Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of Yiddish New York. New York: Dover Publications.
  • Cullen, Jim. 2003. The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation. New York: Oxford UP.
  • Dayton-Wood, Amy. 2012. “‘What the College Has Done for Me’: Anzia Yezierska and the Problem of Progressive Education”. College English, 74 (3): 215-233.
  • Glenn, Susan A. 1990. Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP.
  • Gollub, Ellen. 1983. “Eat Your Heart Out: The Fiction of Anzia Yezierska”. Studies in American Jewish Literature, 3, Jewish Women Writers and Women in Jewish Literature. Pennsylvania: Penn State UP: 51-61.
  • Howe, Irving. 1980. World of our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life they Found and Made. New York: Bantam Books.
  • Konzett, Delia Caparoso. 1997. “Administered Identities and Linguistic Assimilation: The Politics of Immigrant English in Anzia Yezierska’s Hungry Hearts”. American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, 69 (3): 595-619.
  • Kramer, Michael P. and Hana Wirth-Nesher. 2003. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
  • Marovitz, Sanford E. 1996. Abraham Cahan: Twayne’s United States Authors Series. New York: Twayne Publishers.
  • Medding, Pater Y., ed. 1999. Studies in Contemporary Jewry. Volume 14: Coping with Life and Death: Jewish Families in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford UP.
  • Mîndra, Mihai. 2003. Strategists of Assimilation: Abraham Cahan, Mary Antin, Anzia Yezierska. Bucharest: Romanian Academy.
  • Riv-Ellen, Prell. 1998. “Marriage, Americanization and American Jewish Culture (1900-1920)”. In Medding, 1999, 27-48.
  • Rottenberg, Catherine. 2010. “Affective Narratives: Harlem and the Lower East side”. Journal of American Studies, 44, (4): 777-793.
  • Schreier, Barbara. 1994. Becoming American Women: Clothing and the Jewish Immigrant Experience, 1880-1920. Chicago: Chicago Historical Society.
  • Sol, Adam. 2001. “Longings and Renunciations: Attitudes towards Intermarriage in Early Twentieth Century Jewish American Novels”. American Jewish History, 89, (2):215-230.
  • Végsö, Roland. 2010. “The Mother Tongues of Modernity: Modernism, Transnationalism, Translation”. Journal of Modern Literature, 33, (2):24-46.
  • Wald, Priscilla. 2003. “Of Crucibles and Grandfathers: The East European Immigrants”. In Kramer and Wirth-Nesher 2003: 50-69.
  • Yezierska, Anzia. (1920) 2010. Hungry Hearts. USA: Lexington, KY: Forgotten Books.
  • Yezierska, Anzia, (1920) 2010. “The Miracle,” in Hungry Hearts: 114-41.
  • Yezierska, Anzia, (1920/1923) 1991. “How I Found America,” How I Found America: Collected Stories of Anzia Yezierska. New York: Persea Books: 108-128.
  • Yezierska, Anzia, (1927) 2004. Arrogant Beggar. Durham: Duke UP.
  • Yezierska, Anzia, 1991. “Soap and Water,” in How I Found America: 71-77.
  • Zborowski, Mark and Elizabeth Herzog. 1952. Life is with People. The Culture of the Shtetl. New York: Schocken Books.
  • Zierler, Wendy. 1993. “The Rebirth of Anzia Yezierska”. Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, 42, (4): 414-422.
Datuen iturria: Dialnet