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26 pages 52 minutes read

Anzia Yezierska

America and I

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1922

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Important Quotes

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“As one of the dumb, voiceless ones I speak. One of the millions of immigrants beating, beating out their hearts at your gates for a breath of understanding.”


(Paragraph 1)

Yezierska’s melodramatic style is apparent within the first sentences of her essay, where she also focuses immediately on one of her themes: the story of immigrants, which is a struggle often unrecognized by Americans. Immigrants, she implies in these short phrases, have much to offer in return for a little bit of understanding from those who have already “made it” in the US. Their voices remain unheard because they are not part of mainstream America and their ability to assimilate is hampered by invisible barriers, but they desperately wish to be included in the new world they’ve adopted. 

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“Choked for ages in the airless oppression of Russia, the Promised Land rose up—wings for my stifled spirit—sunlight burning through my darkness—freedom singing to be in my prison—deathless songs tuning prison-bards into strings of a beautiful violin.” 


(Paragraph 2)

An example of the emotional language, heavy on metaphor, that Yezierska uses in her essay, this quote evokes the freedom that the young woman experiences in the New World—freedom from religious persecution but also perhaps freedom from the more authoritarian views that traditional Jewish culture has placed on the livelihoods of women. The author expresses a high-flying and dramatic hope here, invoking the conflicts of light against dark, music versus silence, and the freedom and promise of American life against the oppressive existence of past lives in other places.

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“I was in America, among the Americans, but not of them. No speech, no common language, no way to win a smile of understanding from them, only my young, strong body and my untried faith. Only my eager, empty hands, and my full heart shining from my eyes.” 


(Paragraph 8)

Here, author Yezierska focuses specifically on her personal identity as a young, hopeful female immigrant. As with many of her phrases, she uses emotional wording, such as the phrases “eager, empty hands” and “my full heart shining from my eyes” to evoke an image of a vessel waiting to be filled with knowledge and love, a girl trusting and open to learning and to experiencing new things, yet still an outsider to America waiting for a helping hand from others. This paragraph takes place just before she relates her experience with the family that uses her as a servant—a family that has some relation to her and knows the country better than she does, but can hopefully understand her plight. Still, they take her shining enthusiasm and dull it by taking advantage of her instead of treating her kindly. 

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“The best of me I gave them. Their house cares were my house cares. I got up early. I worked till late. All that my soul hungered to give I put into the passion with which I scrubbed floors, scoured pots, and washed clothes. I was so grateful to mingle with the American people, to hear the music of the American language, that I never knew tiredness.” 


(Paragraph 16)

The hope that Yezierska carries as a young immigrant buoys her through her first job as a nanny and housekeeper for a family from her hometown, who have successfully assimilated into American life. She channels her feelings into her work, and her optimism about her new life and trust in her employers makes her feel energetic and grateful to the family who employs her. She is eager to learn to assimilate herself, taking every opportunity to do so in order to speed up the process. This is, of course, before she realizes that the Americanized family is taking advantage of her—that this Americanized family believes her fortunate to be living with them and dealing with their wonderful children. They do not intend to pay her for her labors beyond room and board. That realization traumatizes her so deeply because she was so fresh, willing, and excited before—and she feels betrayed by those that should have given her a helping hand.

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“The hope in me still craved to hope. In darkness, in dirt, in hunger and want, but only to live on!” 


(Paragraph 41)

Though her employment with the Americanized family affects her deeply, she still harbors hope, even though she says, “If murderers would have robbed me and killed me it wouldn’t have hurt me so much” (Paragraph 39). She cannot bring herself to trust in another “American” family, so she turns to “the Ghetto” and to factory work to make her living. Despite her poverty-stricken conditions, she wants to transcend the limitations of her position and live out her own version of the American dream, but seems very far from it in her current circumstances. This is one of the constant refrains of her essay—that desire for more than daily life provides, food for the mind as well as food for the body. She craves sustenance, but the poverty she considers most important has to do with that of self-expression, time, and thought.

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“And I could not tear it out of me, the feeling that America must be somewhere, somehow—only I couldn’t find it—my America, where I would work for love and not for a living. I was like a thing following blindly after something far off in the dark!” 


(Page 47)

Once again invoking the opposing imagery of light and dark, Yezierska here considers her identity and her desires. Her journey here is emblematic of the immigrant’s journey, as many who come to another country lose their identities and must forge new ones for themselves in their new homelands. She wonders, “Who am I? What am I? What do I want with my life? Where is America?” (Paragraph 46) as she spends nights on the roof the tenement looking out at the stars. She is a seeker, here, trying to find meaning in her unexalted existence working at something that is “not me” (Paragraph 48).

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“Now I had better food to eat. I slept on a better bed. Now, I even looked dressed up like the American-born. But inside of me I know that I was not yet an American. I choked with longing when I met an American-born, and I could say nothing.”


(Page 58)

Much of Yezierska’s immigrant journey involves being on the outside looking in. The otherness of immigrants is a topic she tackles with energy. Here, she has finally succeeded in getting the clothes and outer appearance of someone who belongs in America, she does not feel like she belongs. However, she still cannot pinpoint what it is that makes her so different; she says, “I didn’t know what it was I wanted. I only knew I wanted. I wanted. Like the hunger in the heart that never gets food” (Paragraph 59). She is clearly looking for spiritual sustenance, not just having her physical needs being met. This makes her different not just from Americans generally, who seem comfortable in their own land, but also from those who are trying to help her but cannot understand her point of view.

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“Happiness is only by working at what you love. And what poor girl can ever find it to work at what she loves?”


(Page 73)

An encounter with the Women’s Association leads the author to attend a lecture about happy workers. It has her pondering the nature of work, which she has believed (before coming to America) was done only for love, not to make a living. Yezierska’s definition of happiness is being fulfilled in her work, and the work she has available to her is not doing this. She hopes that by hearing the lecturer speak she will find what she considers to be “the real America.” He speaks of efficiency, and she wonders if that is what she needs to lift herself up. Ultimately, however, this sharply-dressed man does not help her in her journey.

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“America gives free bread and rent to criminals in prison. They got grand houses with sunshine, fresh air, doctors and teachers, even for the crazy ones. Why don’t they have free boarding-schools for immigrants—strong people—willing people? Here you see us burning up with something different, and America turns her head away from us.” 


(Page 94)

Yezierska expresses a political idea here, which is that those who have broken the law have it easier in some ways than immigrants, who have something to offer if only they can get past the obstacles put in their way to assimilate. She once again draws upon the imagery of fire to illustrate the passion of immigrants to do something and be something in their new world and is asking that people in power do something to rectify the situation. She also expresses here the frustration of a people who have come to a promised land only to see great disparities of wealth and to find doors closed to them.

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“As a young girl hungry for love sees always before her eyes the picture of lovers’ arms around her, so I saw always in my heart the vision of Utopian America. But now I felt that the America of my dreams never was and never could be. Reality had hit me on the head as with a club. I felt that the America that I sought was nothing but a shadow—an echo—a chimera of lunatics and crazy immigrants.” 


(Page 98)

Once more, Yezierska calls upon the imagery of a hungry heart, likening herself to a starry-eyed teenager in love with a vision. However, she expresses despair in this passage, pointing out the difference (as sometimes happens within romance) between her ideal and reality. She thinks of America as a chimera, an illusion and an impossibility much like the creature out of Greek mythology that has the body parts of several animals. Here, she is at a low point in her life, having had her dreams shattered and looking forward to nothing but a life of drudgery. 

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“Sand, sand was everywhere. With every seeking, every reaching out I only lost myself deeper and deeper in a vast sea of sand.” 


(Page 100)

An example of her emotional language and the use of metaphor, Yezierska here uses an image that she does not repeat elsewhere in the essay, which stands out because of its despairing tone and the fact that it the imagery, used only once, creates a somewhat jarring note within her writing. This passage takes place before she starts to read American history, after she has tried and failed to reach out to people who can help her. 

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“But the great difference between the first Pilgrims and me was they expected to make America, build America, create their own world of liberty. I wanted to find it ready made.”


(Page 103)

As the author investigates American history, she is able to make a parallel between her situation and that of earlier immigrants. After all, the US is a country of immigrants, and many others have gone through similar searches as the one she is undertaking now. It was their persistence that helped them through, and she realizes that the difference between them and her is that she feels entitled to find something ready-made and special within American culture, where the Pilgrims did not. This helps her come to the realization that America is not a finished idea, but a journey, one that she may contribute to in order to make it more like the America of her dreams.

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“Then came a light—a great revelation! I saw America—a big idea—a deathless hope—a world still in the making. I saw that it was the glory of America that it was not yet finished. And I, the last comer, had her share to give, small or great, to the making of America, like those Pilgrims who came in the Mayflower.” 


(Page 107)

The author repeats here, as in the beginning, the idea of a “deathless hope” that is both morbidly phrased and yet idealistic. Her words here—“light,” “hope,” “glory”—give a certain poignant grandeur to this sentiment. She has decided that she can help create the America she dreams of, and this is an empowering statement that defines her new attitude, drawn from and inspired by the very American Pilgrims that came before her.

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“Fired up by this revealing light, I began to build a bridge of understanding between the American-born and myself. Since their life was shut out from such as me, I began to open up my life and the lives of my people to them. And life draws life. In only writing about the Ghetto I found America.” 


(Page 108)

There is actually a great deal missing in this short version of Yezierska’s biography, and much is encapsulated in this one tiny paragraph. She spends so much of her essay bemoaning the lack of understanding she encounters from citizens, and just a few sentences resolving it at the end with what actually becomes her life’s work. She has found her way of expression, her voice, and meaning in being able to attract “life” and tell Americans about the immigrant experience, which is a significant development in her life and a true accomplishment. The wondrous self-transformation happens in just a few sentences, though it contains a multitude of thoughts and years of work. It is an exalted, generous, and inspiring thought. Yet, as she notes in the next paragraph, she feels guilty in her success: “I feel like a man who is sitting down to a secret table of plenty, while his near ones and dear ones are perishing before his eyes” (Paragraph 109).

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 “The America of to-morrow, the America that is every day nearer coming to be, will be too wise, too open-hearted, too friendly-handed, to let the least last-comer at their gates knock in vain with his gifts unwanted.” 


(Page 110)

This is Yezierska’s hope for the end of her essay, a sentence which gains context if one understands the anti-immigration feelings that, during the time Yezierska is writing, is taking hold in American policy. The essay was published in 1920, three years after Congress passed an immigrant act that embodied some of these oppressive ideas and four years before the US limited immigration from her place of origin. She is optimistic here, still drawing upon that ideal America that she can see and has hoped for, even if it doesn’t exist quite yet.

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