Chapter One

The Paradox of Immigration

Autobiographies of Alienation and Assimilation: Mary Antin and Anzia Yezierska

"I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over." So did Mary Antin begin the chronicle of her experiences as an immigrant in the New World. So extraordinary were the changes that Antin underwent after she emigrated as a young girl from Russian Poland to America that she felt she had experienced the creation of a "second self" completely divorced from her earlier life.

Antin's autobiography, The Promised Land, published in 1912, became an immediate best-seller, catapulting its author to national fame and establishing her as the creator of one of the first great works of American Jewish literature. By the time of Antin's death in 1949, The Promised Land had gone through thirty-four editions, becoming one of the most popular immigrant autobiographies of all time. A classic tale of assimilation, hope, and transformation, it spoke to the imagination of diverse immigrant groups, as well as to native-born Americans who saw it as proof of the inclusiveness of the American dream.

Antin's book was one of more than a dozen accounts of immigrant life in the new land written in English by Jewish women. The large number of these works published by American presses is striking, considering that almost all of their authors were unknown, and that for most of them, English was a second language. What made them appealing was the universality of their theme—the encounter with America. Each author wrote about her personal struggle to respond to the hardships and opportunities of American life by creating a new, distinctly American self.