In the “Bread Givers” the story of the Smolinsky’s was set on Hester Street in lower Manhattan after immigrating to the U.S. In this house patriarchy was the rule of the day, where Reb Smolinsky dishes out is absolute power and savagery and small-mindedness on his wife and four daughters where he displayed his patriarchal rule and dominance. Mr. Smolinsky epitomizes the old the old world Russian Judaism tradition and values, he forces his family to work and provide for him while he rejected the notion of working, since his only job was devoted to studying the Torah in synagogue every day of his life and be closer, even if that means his daughters and wife must live under deplorable and disgusting condition. Nothing is wrong with studying the…
Carly Stocks Shelia Hailey March 11, 201 Bread Givers The story that I read is called Bread Givers is a novel written by Anzia Yezierska in 1925 and is about a 10- year old girl named Sara Smolinsky. Anzia Yezierska was born between 1880 and 1885. Her father was a Talmudic scholar, and her family lived on the money her mother made from goods.…
For this assignment I have chosen to look more in depth at Immigration in the late nineteenth century until early twentieth century, and how this life changing experience was handled by different ethnic groups. In turn I will compare and contrast the essays of Victor Greene and Mark Wyman who both portray immigration in their own light. Victor Greens’s essay titled “Permanently Lost: The Trauma of Immigration” uses tools such as music and ballads to display how immigration effected certain ethnic groups and their families. While Mark Wyman’s “Coming and Going: Round - Trip to America” focuses on pamphlets given out in the workforce and more concrete evidence as to how and why immigration took place the way it did. To my mind Wyman’s use…
The rise of Bernie Sanders and the modern democratic socialism movement proved the common sentiment among many Americans: the enmity against wealth inequality. Yet, this problem is not newfound; it has plagued American societies for decades, specifically among the Jews, Mr. Sanders’ cultural community. After the diaspora, many Jews found difficulty and adversity in their attempts to assimilate with others in America, and while some did have success, others did not. This serves as the historical backdrop for the novella, Goodbye, Columbus, a story where a Jewish man, Neil, of a family who has struggled to assimilate and find success falls in love with a Jewish girl, Brenda, of wealth. In great detail, the story outlines the difficulty of assimilation,…
Bread Givers is a novel written by Anzia Yezierska it was originally published in 1925 and rediscover in the 1970s. Anzia Yezierska was a writer, novelist, and essayist that published eight books other the Bread Givers. She was also given a Hollywood contract in the 1920s to write screenplays, however she found it hard to write when she was so far away from her humble begins. Most of Yezierska’s books are semi-autobiographical based on her time spent in the Ghettos of New York. The forward and introduction of this book is written by Alice Kessler-Harris who discovered Yezierska books in the 1960s while studying for her dissertation at the New York Public Library, on New York Jews, in the 1890s.…
Mrs. Sylvia Kovacs-Kerbs, is a young mother from the small country of Hungary. She moved to the United States at just twelve years of age, to join her mother and step-father in a new adventure. There are many cultural aspects the Kerbs family deem necessary to continue within their new American life-style. Although Sylvia has spent more than half her life in America, the cultural roots of Hungary are imbedded in her soul, a culture she and her husband instill in the lives of their four children.…
Bread Givers, by Yezierska Anzia, takes place in 1925 and depicts the life of an immigrant, Jewish girl named Sara Smolinsky and the obstacles she faces in her struggle for independence. Two of the main obstacles Sara Smolinsky faces in her strive for personal independence are family obligations and gender discrimination, which she overcame by prioritizing her education over family, and actively searching for work and love (on her own terms). The first obstacle that Sara faces in her strive for personal independence is that of family obligation. In the novel “Bread Giver”, family duties are one of the central challenges that hold a character from achieving what they want in life.…
One of the most desires things that Sara wants in her life is to have the freedom of living her own life without anyone to stop her of achieving her dreams and goals. Sara Smolinsky is the most independent of Red Smolinsky daughters; she wants to create and live in a world of her own, so she is willing to work very hard to get what she wants, but she knows that her desires to achieve her goals and dreams would make her encounter many barriers and obstacles. Sara has the motivation in life to be independent and take care of herself; however, to achieve her goals and dreams she would need to break away from her family and pursuit her happiness. At a young age, Sara had ideas in her mind that she needed to earn money to support her family, so…
Due to generalizations and prejudices, the lives of immigrants are agonizing which is also evident in Crisitna Henriquez’s, The Book of Unknown Americans. In the novel, Henriquez uses anecdotes from a community of immigrants in Delaware who find comfort in each other through the conflicts of…
You Are What You Eat The award-winning novelist, Jhumpa Lahiri, centers her writings on the theme of identity negotiation. Her characters are often immigrants to the United States, who struggle to preserve their own identity in their adopted home. Her writings are characterized by an omnipresent image of food consumption and rituals of cooking. Food represents cultures.…
In Mexico during the early 1980’s, a group of young siblings living in poverty tell an important story of the immigrant experience and the drives behind migration. Reyna Grande’s, The Distance Between Us, is a memoir written with the recurring appeal to the reader’s pathos. Grande uses the rhetorical strategy to keep the reader’s interest and to help them make personal connections to the story. Grande’s use of pathos helps to show not only the importance of understanding the immigrant experience, but also the importance of following your dreams. For example, the first chapters of the memoir are predominately about Grande and her siblings’ experience living with their Abuelita Evila in Mexico.…
In 2017, during a time of uncertainty and chaos, the top headlines on the news are commonly about immigration. While Americans discuss the economic and social effects that immigration has on our country, hardly, does the conversation ever consider the individual lives of these immigrants. Behind the words of news headlines, are real people, who are simply trying to find a place to be accepted. The process of immigrating to a country is harder now than ever. Often, those involved not only face economic hardships but also endure emotional strife.…
Throughout American history, immigrants from all over the world have traveled to this country in search of a better way of life. The immigrants brought with them a vast range, as well as varied levels of commitment to their native cultures and ideologies. The speed at which the immigrants, both assimilated into, as well as helped create the new culture in which they found themselves, were as diverse as the immigrants themselves. Two respected scholars put forth differing theories to explain the experience of the integration of immigrants into their new American societies. Oscar Handlin suggests that immigrants were uprooted from their old world and ways; the immigrants were victimized by their migration as the things they valued most, such…
Embarking on a new journey is driven by hope, hope that you will find love, refuge, a chance to start over, to live out your dreams, to get a better job and education. Hope motivates us to get out of bed each morning and be the best we can be. Hope is what brought our ancestors here all those years ago and what still inspires people to immigrate from all over the world to live out the American dream. In Not Everyone is Chosen, Waters shows that each wave of immigrants experience different challenges depending on the race and ethnicity. Modern immigrants differ from their family dynamic, society comfortability and their wealth and knowledge.…
Before throwing light on the trauma of immigrants, Hall discusses two positions of identity and relates it with cultural influence on the identities of immigrants.…