Immigrating With Anzia Yezierska Summary

Many people emigrated from Europe to the United States in hope for a new and better life. Through their journeys they had to make several adjustments in order to adapt to the new land they were planning on calling home. Many things probably seemed strange to these people such as the mannerisms they saw, services that were offered in their new life, and barriers they now had to deal with. These new features of life helped to shape this country and the people who established it. Each of the stories explored in this paper show a variety of the type of adjustments being made by the new Americans. The story of Anzia Yezierska is a good example of how different the mannerisms in America are in comparison to Poland in this case. Immigrating with

Upon her return home she begun to notice the lack of manners at the dinner table by her family. To them the use of forks instead of hands was not a necessity, but after being Americanized, Anzia could not bear to be at the table with her parents and their crude table manners. This shows the struggle some families experienced to close the gap between what was acceptable there and what was acceptable here. To Anzia, she “insist[ed] on their changing table manners. One would think I was killing them.” (Stavans 158). This quote shows just how hard some people who came here had adjusting to American manners. While people here would think that eating with your hands or slurping meat off of the bone is rude, people coming here just saw it as normal and acceptable. Like any other transition made in life, it takes time to get out of your comfort zone and readjust. There was also the issue of the immigrants feeling inferior. Anzia’s father in the story accuses her of thinking she is superior to him because she went to college. With the growing opportunity for the kids to

Louis Chu was a Chinese immigrant who experienced a whole different kind of challenges settling into America. In America, Louis was offered prostitution services when he arrived in the United States. This was probably an unusual service in America as compared to China. However it was not a service he turned down. America offered all sorts of perks and services that were new and different to the people coming here from countries all over the globe. These services were often frequented by unsuspecting people at first. In the story Louis tells about how a girl who “looked no more than sixteen. She had a ready smile and nice shapely legs. She beckoned to him. ‘Come. Come here I want to show you something.” (Stavans 260). This is how he first came to experience escort services in the United States. Many men partook in these services, but this too helped to shape early America. It was things like this that created a black market of sorts where people would go to get things they could not obtain legally. While this might seem strange to say it shaped early America, it is undoubtable that things like this are not a part of life today. This created a different income for many in a strange way. Not everything that is considered to have shaped America is always a positive thing, this too built up the country in its early years. This was an indirect story about things