Bread Givers: A Novel - Softcover

Yezierska, Anzia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0892552905 ISBN 13: 9780892552900

Publisher: Persea, 2003

Synopsis

The classic novel of Jewish immigrants, with period photographs.

This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence and self-fulfillment resonates with a passion all can share. Beautifully redesigned page for page with the previous editions, Bread Givers is an essential historical work with enduring relevance. 16 black-and-white photographs

About this title

About the Author:

Anzia Yezierska (1882-1970) was born in Poland and came to the Lower East Side of New York with her family in 1890 when she was nine years old.  By the 1920s she had risen out of poverty and become a successful writer of stories, novels―all autobiographical―and an autobiography, Red Ribbon on a White Horse (Persea). Her novel Bread Givers (Persea) is considered a classic of Jewish American fiction. Her acclaimed books also include How I Found America: Collected Stories and The Open Cage. She died in 1970.

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Persea
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0892552905
• ISBN 13: 9780892552900
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 336