Bread Givers

Bread Givers (Persea Books, 2003)
by Anzia Yezierska
USA, 1925

"It says in the Torah: What's a woman without a man?  Less than nothing--a blotted-out existence.  No life on earth and no hope of Heaven."  (Bread Givers, 205)

Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers, occasionally cited as an important work for its take on modern feminism and the U.S. immigrant experience and read here as the first Wolves group read selection of the year as chosen by E.L. Fay, was a bit of a curiosity for me.  Part female Horatio Alger "success story" and part goofball East Side Kids-style "anthropology" of recent immigrant life on Manhattan, the narrative arc of the novel follows feisty, determinedly studious narrator Sara Smolinsky as she attempts to light out for the Territory and into a teaching career away from Hester Street and her domineering, jobless, and Torah-quoting Polish rabbi father.  While I'm not sure that Bread Givers really has a lot to recommend as a novel (it's caricaturish and predictable, and the lack of anything stylistically bitchin' going on is only magnified when you stop to consider that 1925 was also the year of Mrs. Dalloway), I do think it has something to offer as a portrait of NYC Jewish immigrant life presumably authentic to the zeitgeist of its time and place (caricatures aside, its focus on assimilation, gender roles, poverty, and an ethnic enclave neighborhood full of Zalmon the fish peddlers and other eccentrics lining up to marry the various Smolinsky sisters felt real to me at least).  So is the book worth your time?  Oy vey, such a tough question!  Although inclined to say no, not really, I will say that the eventually endearing Sara and even her unreasonable and perpetually no account father kind of grew on me as characters over time.  Weird.  (http://www.perseabooks.com/)

Anzia Yezierska, the "Sweatshop Cinderella"

Other Opinions
E.L. Fay (This Book and I Could Be Friends)
Emily (Evening All Afternoon)
Frances (Nonsuch Book)
Sarah (what we have here is a failure to communicate)
Shannyn (Libellule)
Wendy (Caribousmom)