This is a very poignant story about a father stuck in his old habits and ways while his child is trying to adapt to the new. At times, i truly wanted to understand the father. He came to a new settlement with intangible ideals about this great new America, but realized all too quickly, how short lived his hopes were. So what is he to do? He turns to what he knows best, religion. Time and again we see father fail with his religious antics, simultaneously tearing the family apart, and i could sense that he too, knew what he was doing. However, being the only male in the family, he couldn't, no, he didn't want to admit his failures to his family and so, he turned a blind eye to them. If he loses the one and only thing that he thought he could grasp, then what would his life amount to? Probably nothing, at least in the eyes of the father. Sara on the other hand, comes to terms with father's relentless demand for authority, and tries to break free from it. She does succeed in this, but of course, blood is thicker than water, and by the end of the novel, you can see how much she actually cares for her family, and more so her father. She forgives him and starts to accept him for who he is. And really, that's love isn't it? Not trying to change the other person, but acceptance.

This is a powerful book and helped me gain an appreciation for the small things in life.

It is important to note that this is not historical fiction, this book was written in 1925 and is semi autobiographical. This is the real life immigrant story, and quite amazing to me. Sara will not give in to the strictures of her tyrannical Orthodox father and goes out on her own, almost unheard of in those years. She gets an education and goes to college!! This is not a spoiler, as the impact of the book is the life of these immigrants, the unbelievable crushing poverty and ignorance! What I liked best is the English of the people in the book is how I remember my grandmother speaking. "...so we could all sit down by the table and eat like people" just one of the phrases.This is a heartbreaking book, but I thank my grandparents for leaving their homes and coming to this country. I hope they didn't have to go through the life Sara did, but I tried to ask when they were alive and never got a clear picture. So I appreciate that this book exhists, even though some reading it today think some of the characters are overdrawn, maybe it was accurate for the time.

A semi-autobiographical work, this is a story of inter-generational immigrant conflict.

Set in the 1920s, it tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter in a family of only daughters. Her family has recently migrated from "the Old World". Her father is a strict orthodox Jew. He clings to the old-world values and mores that he knows while his daughters, particularly Sara, struggle to fit into the new world around them. Sara experiences her father's values and demands as tyrannical--and, witnessing the devastating impact that his decisions have for the course of the lives of her older sisters, struggles to make different decisions for herself--putting her, inevitably, in conflict against her father.

I think that Anzia Yezierska has done an excellent job of capturing the emotion and tone of this classic generational immigrant conflict. She also highlights the oppressively misogynist tenets present in many orthodox old world structures—including Orthodox Judaism.

While I thought she did a good job capturing the tone, I had difficulty connecting with her urgent, choppy writing style and found it distracting at times; but this is a minor quibble. This is an excellent book on many levels, particularly when considered in its proper historical context, and I recommend it.

n  Quotesn:
"The school teacher's rule, 'A place for everything, and everything in its place,' was no good for us because there weren't enough places." p8

“The prayers of his daughters didn’t count because God didn’t listen to women. Heaven and the next world were only for men. Women could get into Heaven because they were wives and daughters of men. Women had no brains for the study of God’s Torah, but they could be servants of men who studied the Torah. Only if they cooked for the men, and washed for the men, and didn’t nag or curse the men our of their homes; only if they let the men study the Torah in peace, then, maybe, they could push themselves into Heaven with the men, to wait on them there.” p10

“Poor people don’t need locks on their houses. They can leave their doors wide open, because nobody will come to steal poverty…” p70

"As he drove away Bessie's man, so he drove away Mashah's lover. And each time he killed the heart from one of his children, he grew louder with his preaching on us all." p65

"A writer, a poet you want for a husband? Those who sell the papers at least earn something. But what earns a poet? Do you want starvation and beggary for the rest of your days? Who'll pay your rent? Who'll buy your bread?...with a husband who wastes his time writing poems of poverty instead of working for a living?" p68-69 [Sara's father's outburst to his other daughter Fania, who has fallen in love with a poet; ironic, yes?].

“‘Empty-head!’ shouted Father. ‘Where were your brains? Didn’t you go out with the man a whole month before you were married? Couldn’t you see he was a swindler and a crook when you talked to him?’ ‘Couldn’t I see? cried Mashah. ‘I thought you said you saw. You said you knew yourself a person on first sight. You picked him out! You brought him to the house!...’” p83 [This conversation occurs between Sarah’s sister Mashah and her father when it is revealed that the man her father insisted that she marry is not the person he seemed.]

“‘What [sic] are you always blaming everything on the children?’ I burst out at Father. ‘Didn’t you yourself make Fania marry Abe Schmukler when she cried she didn’t want him? You know yourself how she ate out her heart for Morris Lipkin.’” p85 [Sara to her father after he chastises another of his daughters, Fania, for complaining about her bad marriage, also arranged by her father.]”

“No wonder it says in the Torah, ‘Woe to a man who has females for his offspring’!” p95

“And woe to us women who got to live in a Torah-made world that’s only for men.” p95

“‘Women were always the curse of men,’ he went on, but when they get older they’re devils and witches. That’s why it says in the Torah that a man has a right to hate an old maid for no other reason but because no man had her, so no man wants her.” p 95-96

“Maybe if I could only live like others and look like others, they wouldn’t pick on me so much.” p181

“On the outside I looked like the other girls. But the easy gladness that sparkled from their eyes was not in mine. They were a bunch of light-hearted savages who looked gay because they felt gay. I was like a dolled-up dummy fixed for a part on the stage…I turned to my work, raw with the shame that I had tried to be like the rest and couldn’t” p183

“I no longer saw my father before me, but a tyrant from the Old World where only men were people. To him I was nothing but his last unmarried daughter to be bought and sold.” p205

“My God! I am flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood. Why can’t he understand me? Why don’t we understand each other? Full of bitterness, I cried out to him: ‘What do you want from me? Why do you torture me?’” p206

“God put people on earth to get married and have children yet. It says in the Torah, Breed and multiply. A woman’s highest happiness is to be a man’s wife, the mother of a man’s children. You’re not a person at all” p206

“I saw there was no use talking. He could never understand. He was the Old World. I was the New.” p207

“Have I children like other people’s children who carry their father like a crown on their heads? Have they provided for me as God-fearing children provide for an old father?” p284

“‘The sages of the Talmud said, a man has a right to divorce his wife if she don’t salt him his soup to his taste. And mine is guilty of worse offences. She’s selfish and wants to live for herself, instead of living only for a husband…I thought if I’d marry a young one, she’d have strength to work for me…but she only wants pleasure and luxuries of the flesh. So maybe it would be better for me to go to an Old Men’s Home where I could spend my last days in peace instead of living with a false wife who reminds me always that I am old.” p290

“He looked at me, and in that look I felt the full force of his unbending spirit…Have you forgotten your sacrilege, your contempt for God’s law…I must keep the Sabbath holy. I cannot have my eating contaminated with your carelessness…But if you’ll promise to keep sacred all that is sacred to me…then, maybe, I’ll see. I almost hated him again as I felt the tyranny—the tyranny with which he tried to crush me as a child. Then suddenly the pathos of this lonely old man pierced me. In a world where all is changed, he alone remained unchanged—as tragically isolate as the rocks. All that he had left of life was his fanatical adherence to his traditions” p295-296 [an exchange between Sara and her father when she offers him to come and live with her.]

“It wasn’t just my father, but the generations who made my father whose weight was still upon me.” p297

a fight between an unchanging will and a world spurred by change. The extreme will it takes to find oneself in a new world, push past every possible hardship, and make it to the other side. Sara was an extremely compelling character as I felt myself learning alongside her and rooting for her every step of the way. I was practically jumping with joy when she met Hugo and had a caring wholesome relationship with someone, as opposed to the rest of the examples of love throughout the book. Interesting to see nyc as it once was and how fragments of it are still present today. Shoutout Howie for this one fr.

I really enjoyed this book - an interesting look at jewish immigrants in the 1920's, a somewhat autobiographical story told through novel form. It shows the struggle of the main character in her want to be american and her cultural ties. old vs new. etc. The author touches on immigration,poverty, culture clashes, the women's movement, and more so the jewish woman's movement, and also just...the start of the rise of secular judaism. To me, the 1920's is always an interesting setting to read about.
Anyways, it was a fun read and written well. I wonder why I never had to read this in class (as both Austin and my brother did) but I am glad I read it now either way.

I don't love this novel, but I appreciate it a lot more than I did the first time I read it, back in grad school in the early 1990s. In particular, I appreciate Yezierska's powerful capturing of Yiddish-inflected English, as in one of the opening lines of the novel: "But from always it was heavy on my heart the worries for the house as if I was mother" (1). As the protagonist/narrator gets more education, her English narration subtly changes. There's no moment when everything changes, but by the end of the novel, she's saying things such as "Then suddenly the pathos of this lonely old man pierced me" (296).

A fascinating look into the experience of a first-generation American immigrant, torn between the familial pull of the Old World and the opportunities available in a vibrant New York.

Yezierska portrays so well the toxic effect that an overbearing and religiously fundamentalist father has on his wife and daughters, blunting and destroying their chances for personal and professional success and happiness. Sara, the youngest daughter, breaks free of her father to pursue her dreams for education. The chapter on her time in college was so well-done, and rings true today - no matter how bright a person is, without the gloss and polish of at least a middle-class upbringing, society can be difficult to navigate.

This is really the ultimate "girl power" book, and considering that it was written in the 1920s, ahead of its time. It showed up on a lot of college reading lists during my time at university, and I've been meaning to read it for the last 20 years. It might have made a greater visceral impact on me at 18 or 20, when, like Sara, I was forging my own path. But now, it reminds me of how far American women have come in the last 100 years, how hard those battles were, and what a threat fundamentalist men still are to our well-being. Strongly recommended.

3.5 stars. I hate the ending. Review to come.

I was into chapter three before I looked at the cover and realized this was a piece of fiction and not a memoir! This would have gotten a higher rating, I actually really liked the story and wanted to know what happened, if the writing wasn't so poor.

I love stories of overcoming adversity against the odds, of having a fighting spirit, of fighting tooth and nail against injustice. That is what this story is all about. The main character is born into a very poor immigrant family under the thumb of her overbearing, over righteous father who wants to control and dictate her life but not lift a single finger to provide for his family or set a proper example. She rebels and finds solace and purpose in education. She strives for an education to provide food for her body and nourishment for her soul. She achieves a level of independence and dignity unavailable to anyone else in her family. It is an incredible story of resilience, persistence and triumph over ignorance and injustice.

A story of culture and poverty struggle of an extremly poor, highly religious immigrant family merging into the new culture of the new world : the America.

The story took place in 1890s when the Jewish family migrated from Russian Poland to The America with dreams of quick wealth and fortune.

Then a cultural war emerge between the conservative, eastern-way of thinking father with a daughter that dreams of going to college at a time where colleges were thought to be only for men and women shouldn't be more than school teachers.

I enjoyed reading every page of this book. A true story of contention and strife !