Bread Givers - Softcover

Yezierska, Anzia

3.75

6,321 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0892550147 ISBN 13: 9780892550142

Publisher: Persea Books, 1999

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Persea's 25th anniversary edition of this classic of twentieth-century American literature. More than 250,000 copies sold. Set on New York's Lower East Side during the 1920s, this is the moving story of a young woman's struggle to free herself from the traditional female role in an Orthodox Jewish family and society. Sara Smolinksy, the youngest daughter of a rabbi, watches as her father marries off her sisters into dire circumstances, and she vows to escape this fate. She leaves home, takes a job as an ironer, and rents a room with a door: "This door was life. It was air. The bottom starting-point of becoming a person." Sara's rebellion and her struggle for self-fulfillment-for education, work, and a marriage based on love-resonates with a passionate intensity all can share. In this new edition, the original text is retained; the introduction is updated; and a new foreword is added describing the discovery of this important work and the relationship with Yezierska's daughter that followed.

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About the Author:

Anzia Yezierska (1889-1970), a Polish Jewish immigrant, wrote about "her people"-the Jews of the Lower East Side-in an autobiography, short stories, and novels, many published by Persea. Alice Kessler-Harris, a women's and labor historian, is on the faculty of Columbia University.

Review:

Conscious of her outsider status - a Polish immigrant, a writer in a foreign language, a Jewish female - Anzia Yezierska takes us inside an early twentieth-century American immigrant Jewish family, a family without a son to lighten their load or brighten their lives. Sarah, the narrator of Bread Givers, describes with urgency and in detail the lives she, her sisters, and her mother live to support their revered, torah-reading father: their crowded shared rooms so he can study undisturbed; the numerous jobs all but he work to maintain the family and support his books, charities, and manner of dress; his constant and often impossible demands. Sarah struggles to remain loyal: "I began to feel I was different than my sisters... If they ever had times they hated Father, they were too frightened of themselves to confess... But could I help it what was inside me? I had to feel what I felt even it killed me." Through profuse and perceptive dialogue, Anzia Yezierska brings to life a heritage whose strength, wisdom, and idiom continue, seventy years later, to enrich North American culture and language. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen

One of the authentic and touching testaments of the struggle of Jewish immigrants, especially Jewish women, to find their way in the new world. -- Irving Howe

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