Immigrant Story: The Value of Anzia Yezierska's 'Bread Givers'

“‘There wasn’t anybody who didn’t know Anzia Yezierska,’ commented a woman recently of the 1920s. Today, there is hardly anyone who does.”

So wrote historian Alice Kessler-Harris in her 1975 introduction to Yezierska’s Bread Givers, a novel about Jewish immigrant life on the Lower East Side, first published in 1925. If, 40 years ago, ignorance toward the European-born Yezierska and her novel had prevailed, Wednesday evening’s talk at New York’s Tenement Museum suggested the extent to which awareness of Yezierska, her novel, and protagonist Sara Smolinsky has since been restored—to widespread appreciation.

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