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Russian immigration to America
Russian immigration to America
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Bread Givers Sara struggles in society with her lack of income and experience in America in Bread Givers, by Anzia Yezierska. With Sara’s economic background, she didn’t have the money to dress or the experience to act like others. Trying to find her place in society, she tried to fit in with her independence and determination. Being a Russian immigrant made life in society for Sara, difficult. Sara, with her economic hardships, struggles to look like others around her. She’s embarrassed when she goes to work and everyone’s dressed up, while she’s in rags. One day she gets so fed up and decides to dress up like the pretty girls at work but, “When I got to the laundry I hurried into the cloakroom to tear the roses off my hat and wash
the paint off my face. But before I knew what or how, the girls crowded around me”(183). Sara was baffled when her attempt to impress her co-workers with her new clothes failed. They leered at Sara knowing she would always be different. In Bread Givers, Sara struggles to fit in with the burden of her appearance. Based on her father’s torah based atmosphere at home, Sara thought it would be different in New York City. She thought father’s constant reminders that men are superior to women would stop after she left home. However, Sara was wrong when she went to get lunch and said, “But you didn’t give me as much as you have him. Isn’t my money as good as his.” “Don’t you know they always give men more?” called a voice from the line” (168). She felt naive and foolish thinking that coming to America, away from her jewish household would stop the degrading of women, but as it seems she was the only one that thought America would be as feminist as her. Sara’s thoughts on how America viewed equality differed from hers. With her independence sara fights through her struggles in society.
One of the first and most vital sources utilized was Not By Bread Alone by Barbara Engel. This article comes from Barbara Alpern Engel who is a historian who has wrote several books on Russian women and specifically Russian women during the early 1900s. The book appears in the larger journal The Journal of Modern History. The purpose of this article is to expound on the subsistence riots in WWI era Russia and the ones that lead to the Russian Revolution. A value of this source is her specialization, it seems, in Russian history from 1700 onwards. She has wrote several other books on Russian history and thus she has a greater knowledge than most on the subject. A limitation of this article maybe since she
In the novel The Bread Givers, there was a Jewish family, the Smolinsky family, that had immigrated from Russia to America. The family consisted of four daughters, a father, and a mother. The family lived in a poverty-stricken ghetto. The youngest of the daughters was Sara Smolinsky, nicknamed ?Iron Head? for her stubbornness. She was the only daughter that was brave enough to leave home and go out on her own and pursue something she wanted without the permission of her father. The Smolinsky family was very poor, they were to the point of which they could not afford to throw away potato peelings, and to the point of which they had to dig through other people?s thrown out ash in order to gather the coal they needed. They could not afford to buy themselves new clothes or new furniture.
She knows she will never truly experience poverty because this is nothing more than a project but she leaves behind her old life and becomes known as a divorced homemaker reentering the workforce after many years. Her main goal is to get enough income to be able to pay for all her expenses and have enough money to pay next months rent.
The story’s main character, Jurgis Rudkus, goes through a great deal of hardship in this story. His family moves from Lithuania in hopes of chasing “the American Dream”. Instead they find that the higher wages they earn are offset by the much higher cost of living. Everyone in the family has
Anzia Yezierska’s 1925 novel Bread Givers ends with Sara Smolinsky’s realization that her father’s tyrannical behavior is the product of generations of tradition from which he is unable to escape. Despite her desire to embrace the New World she has just won her place in, she attempts to reconcile with her father and her Jewish heritage. The novel is about the tension inherent in trying to fit Old and New worlds together: Reb tries to make his Old World fit into the new, while Sara tries to make her New World fit into the Old. Sara does not want to end up bitter and miserable like her sisters, but she does not want to throw her family away all together. Her struggle is one of trying to convince her patriarchal family to accept her as an independent woman, while assimilating into America without not losing too much of her past.
She sets out to explore the world that welfare mothers are entered. The point was not so much to become poor as to get a sense of the spectrum of low-wage work that existed-from waitressing to housekeeping. She felt mistreated when it was announced that there has been a report on “drug activity”, as a result, the new employees will be required to be tested, as will the current employees on a random basis. She explained feeling mistreated, “I haven 't been treated this way-lined up in the corridor, threatened with locker searches, peppered with carelessly aimed accusations-since junior high school” (Ehrenreich,286). The other problem is that this job shows no sign of being financially viable. Ehrenreich states that there is no secret economies that nourish the poor, “If you can 't put up the two months’ rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for a room by the week” (286). On the first day of housekeeping, she is yelled and given nineteen rooms to clean. For four hours without a break she striped and remake the beds. At the end of the experience she explained that she couldn 't hold two jobs and couldn 't make enough money to live on with one as where single mothers with children. She has clarified that she has advantages compare to the long-term
The three girls entering the store in bathing suits and “walking against the usual traffic” coming down the aisle symbolize Sammy’s individualism. Because of the girl’s different appearance from the usual shoppers in A & P, Sammy couldn’t help but stare. This type of dress was not part of the “A & P policy” especially since “the women generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they get out of the car into the street”.
Many of these groups utilize surveys and other census data to compile a greater amount of statistics. These studies find that a large amount of Americans that are in poverty today actually have far greater privilege in household appliances and conveniences than did those in poverty in previous years. According to surveys from 2012, 80% of households in poverty have air conditioning as compared to only 36% of all homes in 1970. About 75% have one vehicle and around 31% have two or more vehicles. Over two-thirds also have cable/satellite TV and DVD/VCR machines(Sheffield). Some commentators chalk this up to the devaluation of goods and the commonality of many of these household appliances but others see this as an increase in quality of living. Most people thinking of poverty also think of hunger and malnourishment. In the memoir, we see that the kids often go hungry do to lack or mismanagement of money by their parents. A quote from the book, “When other girls came in and threw away their lunch bags in the garbage pails, I’d go retrieve them” displays the struggle the writer had in finding enough
This Story takes place in 1961, in a small New England town's A&P grocery store. Sammy, the narrator, is introduced as a grocery checker and an observer of the store's patrons. He finds himself fascinated by a particular group of girls. Just in from the beach and still in their bathing suits, they are a stark contrast, to the otherwise plain store interior. As they go about their errands, Sammy observes the reactions, of the other customers, to this trio of young women. He uses the word "Sheep" to describe the store regulars, as they seem to follow one and other, in their actions and reactions. The girls, however, appear to be unique in all aspects of their beings: walking, down the isles, against the grain: going barefoot and in swim suits, amongst the properly attired clientele. They are different and this is what catches and holds Sammy's attention. He sees them in such detail, that he can even see the queen of the bunch. Sammy observes their movements and gestures, up until the time of their checkout. At which point, they are confronted by the store manager and chastised for their unacceptable appearance. He believes their attire to be indecent. Sammy, feeling that the managerial display was unnecessary and unduly embarrassing for the girls, decides to quit his position as checker. Thought he knows that his decision may be hasty, he knows that he has to follow through and he can never go back. He leaves, with a clean conscious, but the burden of not knowing what the future has in store.
Shipler, David K. The Working Poor: Invisible in America (Vintage). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition, 2008.
Sammy worked a typical boring job and what seemed to be in a typical small town. The only person in the store he really related to was Stokesie, which is the foil to Sammy, because Stokesie is married, has kids and eventually wanted to be manger one day. Something Sammy did not want to stick around and see. The customers in the store were all pretty much the same, in which Sammy did not show much emotion towards except he referred to them as “the sheep pushing their carts down the aisle” (Updike 261). It is easy to tell Sammy did not like his job, but it also seemed he had no other option, as if he was stuck in his small town and there was no way out. Then out of the blue he saw three girls wearing only their bathing suites walk in the store. Sammy noticed something different about them, like they were liberated from the conservative values of those times; they were part of a new generation. Especially Queenie, he referred to...
The Smolinsky family in Bread Givers immigrates to the United States due to political strife. They actually leave Russia as an indirect result of the father’s refusal to serve in the army. His refusal is based on his religious beliefs. The mother, Shenah Smolinsky, explained the reason to Sara, the narrator, by saying, "The tsar of Russia [ …] wanted to tear your father away from his learning and make him a common soldier" (33). The family buys the father out of the army. Then due to the sudden death of Mrs. Smolinsky’s father, Mr. Smolinsky takes over his father-in-law’s business. Mr.Smolinsky’s business knowledge is hindered by his dedication to his religion and the business is forced to close. Thus, Mr. Smolinsky took to heart the American Dream, "And when everything was gone from us, then our only hope was to come to America, where Father thought things cost n...
In the story Jubilee by Kirstin Valdez Quade A young very bright Latin American woman, Andrea, struggles with feeling like she’s been accepted in today’s society despite all of her achievements. These feelings tend to peak and turn negative whenever she’s around the family of her father’s lifelong employer, the Lowells, and in particularly their daughter Parker. Although the Lowells, as a whole seem to love Andrea and her family, she finds that their success and good fortune directly correlates to her family’s second rate citizenship. This story reveals that obsession with being accepted as an equal can be an ever increasing stressor that can severely damage a child’s identity, social skills and ultimately lead to misplaced resentment and
The grocery store setting is crucial to the theme. Sammy is forced to wear a tie and apron as part of his uniform which demonstrates exactly what he hates—conformity. “The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle—the girls were walking against the usual traffic—were pretty hilarious. You could see them…kind of jerk, or hop, or hiccup, but their eyes snapped back to their own baskets and on they pushed” (193). Sammy is critical of the costumers, referring to them as sheep because they follow the flock without breaking free and acting as an independent individual. The three girls cause a disruption
The women on the trail, though it shows, had little time to care about mending clothes, “The majority of the overland women wore what clothing they had and prayed that what they wore would not tear. They were too preoccupied with the necessities of the day to consider fashion at all (Schlissel 105). ” I would be happy if I were these women because that just means one less chore that was their “duty” to perform. In conclusion, the woman of the Victorian Era had her role in life planned out from before she was born. Although it was a dreadful role, these women carried it out in a way that shows their purity of the heart and willingness to do so many things for others and for little return.