Bread Givers Bread Givers tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, whose life is almost the same as Anzia Yezierska, who is the author. Through Sara we see the collapse of a family because of religion and old world ways. Sara tries so hard to get away from her past but in the end it shows that your family will always be there, for good or bad. Sara Smolinsky is the youngest of four sisters; the eldest is Bessie, whom everyone calls the “Burden-bearer” because the whole family lives on her pay check. “I knew the landlord came that morning hollering for rent. And the whole family were hanging on Bessie’s neck for her wages. Unless she got work soon, we’d be thrown in the street to shame and to laughter for the whole world.”(1) The second eldest daughter was Fania, who loves to read and speaks her mind. The third sister is Mashah, “empty-head, loves her own pretty face and spends out her earnings for clothes and drugstore accessories, to the scandal of her sisters, the disgust of the mother and the outspoken rage of her father.”(Turbulent) The final daughter is Sara who is the most independent and is searching for her own life, way from their father. “Reb Smolinsky, wise in the lore of the Torah, comfortably immured in the seclusion of his learning, calmly collects the earnings of his four daughters and chants of the terrors and the hatreds and the punishments from the Old Testament and the Hebrew writers.” (Turbulent) We do not hear much from the girl’s mother, Shena but know she revels in Reb’s holiness. The family structure is very important to Reb and Shena but not to Sara, she believes she can make her own family the way she wants. With or without religion. “Four young immigrant daughters and their selfless mother are pitted against a... ... middle of paper ... ...fying Individualism: Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers." The Immigrant Experience in North American Literature: Carving Out a Niche. Ed. Katherine B. Payant and Toby Rose. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. 17-30. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 205. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 11 Apr. 2014. • "Overview: Bread Givers." Novels for Students. Ed. Sara Constantakis. Vol. 29. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 2 May 2014. • "Turbulent Folkways of the Ghetto in a New Novel." The New York Times Book Review (13 Sept. 1925): 8. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 46. Detroit: Gale Research, 1988. Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 11 Apr. 2014 • Yezierska, Anzia, and Alice Harris. Bread givers: a novel ; with photographs. 3. ed. New York, NY: Persea Books, 2003. Print.
... while she still has time (257). She fails at first, thinking her father is “bereft of his senses” in his second marriage (258). She believes this despite the Torah saying, “a man must have a wife to keep him pure, otherwise his eyes are tempted by evil” (259). Gradually, Sara begins to understand her father: the only thing he has in life is his fanatical adherence to traditions; “In a world where all is changed, he alone remained unchanged” (296). Reb has a deep and true fear of God, to expect him to change beliefs that he believes have been handed down by God, beliefs that have persisted for thousands of years, is illogical. It is impossible to reconcile fully the New World with the Old, and it is the responsibility of the New to be the more flexible, unfair as it may be.
Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer – An Introduction to Short Fiction. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. Print.
The author, Melina Marchetta applies a variety of familiar and stereotypical events in the book. From cases such as the different characters, their characteristics and their reaction upon certain events that occur in the book. One great example of a stereotypical event in this book is the relationship between Josephine Alibrandi and Jacob Coote who is the school captain of a public school called Cook High. “He cracked two eggs on my glasses once” (32).
Anzia Yezierska has written two short story collections and four novels about the struggles of Jewish immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. Yezierska stories explore the subject of characters’ struggling with the disillusioning America of poverty and exploitation while they search for the ‘real’ America of their ideals. She presents the struggles of women against family, religious injunctions, and social-economic obstacles in order to create for herself an independent style. Her stories all incorporate autobiographical components. She was not a master of style, plot development or characterization, but the intensity of feeling and aspiration are evident in her narratives that overrides her imperfections.
August is the eldest Boatwright sister, and she is the most successful at dealing with grief. She experienced the suicides of two sisters, but she managed to retain her optimism and perspective, unlike June or May. One way August relinquishes grief is through religion. She is the leader of a group called the Daughters of Mary – a group of African-American women who worship Our Lady of Chains. August “manifests the Madonna’s wisdom and protection, balancing out June’s excessive intellectual qualities and May’s excessive emotional qualitie...
Charters, A. (2011). The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (8th ed.). Boston: Bedfor/St. Martin's.
Krupnick, Mark.. "Jewish-American Literature." New Immigrant Literatures in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary Heritage. Ed. Alpana Sharma Knippling. WEstport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996. 295-308.
Stein, Karen F. "Amy Tan." Critical Survey of Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition (2001): 1-3. Literary Reference Center Plus. EBSCO. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.
...oreover, Hugo’s eager acceptance of Sara’s father and his cultural traditions draws Sara full circle into reconciliation with both her father and the traditional Jewish culture he personifies.
American Literature. 6th Edition. Vol. A. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 783-791
This is an Interview that I conducted when checking the historical accuracy of the story. Not only was this a helpful source to that but also explained how she saw the Holocaust in her eyes of a young girl that was only a year older than Sarah. Though she was young and at times it was hard for her to talk about or even remember, there were not many gender defining roles that she
Margolies, Edward. “History as Blues: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1968. 127-148. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale, 1989. 115-119. Print.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.