ANZIA YEZIERSKA
Anzia Yezierska was born in a Polish province of Russia in the year 1886, and migrated, when nine years old, to New York City, where she was sent to work in an East Side sweatshop at a dollar and a half a week. Her life in America has been a heroic struggle for self-expression both in a literary and spiritual sense.Since upon every hand one hears the cry that more should be required of the immigrants in the way of preparation for citizenship, in loyalty and in service, it is very fitting that this book of selections should close with that touching passage of her story, “How I Found America,” which sets forth the immigrants’ yearning for fellowship with native Americans and their passionate desire to serve. Will not here be found the two master keys—fellowship and service—to the successful accomplishment of the work of Americanization; in fact, without which all attempts at Americanization will prove futile?The writings of the immigrants have hitherto been largely historical and sociological in character. Miss Yezierska’s work suggests the unlimited artistic possibilities of the newer elements in our national life,—gifts on which we should not lay violent hands, but which we should carefully conserve as a part of the heritage of America to the future. It is interesting to note that one of her stories was selected by Edward J. O’Brien as the best piece of imaginative writing in short form produced during the year 1919.That part of the story that follows is taken from the issue ofThe Centuryfor November, 1920. The same story in longer and somewhat different form is found in a volume of her collected writings recently published by Houghton Mifflin under the title, “Hungry Hearts.”
Anzia Yezierska was born in a Polish province of Russia in the year 1886, and migrated, when nine years old, to New York City, where she was sent to work in an East Side sweatshop at a dollar and a half a week. Her life in America has been a heroic struggle for self-expression both in a literary and spiritual sense.
Since upon every hand one hears the cry that more should be required of the immigrants in the way of preparation for citizenship, in loyalty and in service, it is very fitting that this book of selections should close with that touching passage of her story, “How I Found America,” which sets forth the immigrants’ yearning for fellowship with native Americans and their passionate desire to serve. Will not here be found the two master keys—fellowship and service—to the successful accomplishment of the work of Americanization; in fact, without which all attempts at Americanization will prove futile?
The writings of the immigrants have hitherto been largely historical and sociological in character. Miss Yezierska’s work suggests the unlimited artistic possibilities of the newer elements in our national life,—gifts on which we should not lay violent hands, but which we should carefully conserve as a part of the heritage of America to the future. It is interesting to note that one of her stories was selected by Edward J. O’Brien as the best piece of imaginative writing in short form produced during the year 1919.
That part of the story that follows is taken from the issue ofThe Centuryfor November, 1920. The same story in longer and somewhat different form is found in a volume of her collected writings recently published by Houghton Mifflin under the title, “Hungry Hearts.”
Times changed. The sweat-shop conditions that I had lived through had become a relic of the past. Wages had doubled, tripled, and went up higher and higher, and the working day became shorter and shorter. I began to earn enough to move my family uptown into a sunny, airy flat with electricity and telephone service. I even saved up enough to buy a phonograph and a piano.
My knotted nerves relaxed. At last I had become free from the worry for bread and rent, but I was not happy. A more restless discontent than ever before ate out my heart. Freedom from stomach needs only intensified the needs of my soul.
I ached and clamored for America. Higher wages and shorter hours of work, mere physical comfort, were not yet America. I had dreamed that America was a place where the heart could grow big with living. Though outwardly I had become prosperous, life still forced me into an existence of mere getting and getting.
Ach!how I longed for a friend, a real American friend, some one to whom I could express the thoughts and feelings that choked me! In the Bronx, the uptown ghetto, I felt myself farther away from the spirit of America than ever before. In the East Side the people had yet alive in their eyes the old, old dreams of America, the America that would release the age-old hunger to give; but in the prosperous Bronx good eating and good sleeping replaced the spiritual need for giving. The chase for dollars and diamonds deadened the dreams that had once brought them to America.
More and more the all-consuming need for a friend possessed me. In the street, in the cars, in the subways, I was always seeking, ceaselessly seeking for eyes, a face, the flash of a smile that would be light in my darkness.
I felt sometimes that I was only burning out my heart for a shadow, an echo, a wild dream, but I couldn’t help it.Nothing was real to me but my hope of finding a friend. America was not America to me unless I could find an American that would make America real.
The hunger of my heart drove me to the night-school. Again my dream flamed. Again America beckoned. In the school there would be education, air, life for my cramped-in spirit. I would learn to think, to form the thoughts that surged formless in me. I would find the teacher that would make me articulate.
I joined the literature class. They were reading “The De Coverley Papers.” Filled with insatiate thirst, I drank in every line with the feeling that any moment I would get to the fountain-heart of revelation. Night after night I read with tireless devotion. But of what? The manners and customs of the eighteenth century, of people two hundred years dead.
One evening, after a month’s attendance, when the class had dwindled from fifty to four, and the teacher began scolding us who were present for those who were absent, my bitterness broke.
“Do you know why all the girls are dropping away from the class? It’s because they have too much sense than to waste themselves on ‘The De Coverley Papers.’ Us four girls are four fools. We could learn more in the streets. It’s dirty and wrong, but it’s life. What are ‘The De Coverley Papers?’ Dry dust fit for the ash-can.”
“Perhaps you had better tell the principal your ideas of the standard classics,” she scoffed, white with rage.
“All right,” I snapped, and hurried down to the principal’s office.
I swung open the door.
“I just want to tell you why I’m leaving. I—”
“Won’t you come in?” The principal rose and placed a chair for me near her desk. “Now tell me all.” She leaned forward with an inviting interest.
I looked up, and met the steady gaze of eyes shining with light. In a moment all my anger fled. “The De Coverley Papers” were forgotten. The warm friendliness of her faceheld me like a familiar dream. I couldn’t speak. It was as if the sky suddenly opened in my heart.
“Do go on,” she said, and gave me a quick nod. “I want to hear.”
The repression of centuries rushed out of my heart. I told her everything—of the mud hut in Sukovoly where I was born, of the Czar’s pogroms, of the constant fear of the Cossack, of Gedalyah Mindel’s letter, of our hopes in coming to America, and my search for an American who would make America real.
“I am so glad you came to me,” she said. And after a pause, “You can help me.”
“Help you?” I cried. It was the first time that an American suggested that I could help her.
“Yes, indeed. I have always wanted to know more of that mysterious, vibrant life—the immigrant. You can help me know my girls. You have so much to give—”
“Give—that’s what I was hungering and thirsting all these years—to give out what’s in me. I was dying in the unused riches of my soul.”
“I know; I know just what you mean,” she said, putting her hand on mine.
My whole being seemed to change in the warmth of her comprehension. “I have a friend,” it sang itself in me. “I have a friend!”
“And you are a born American?” I asked. There was none of that sure, all-right look of the Americans about her.
“Yes, indeed. My mother, like so many mothers,”—and her eyebrows lifted humorously whimsical,—“claims we’re descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, and that one of our lineal ancestors came over in theMayflower.”
“For all your mother’s pride in the Pilgrim Fathers, you yourself are as plain from the heart as an immigrant.”
“Weren’t the Pilgrim Fathers immigrants two hundred years ago?”
She took from her desk a book and read to me.
Then she opened her arms to me, and breathlessly I felt myself drawn to her. Bonds seemed to burst. A suffusionof light filled my being. Great choirings lifted me in space. I walked out unseeingly.
All the way home the words she read flamed before me: “We go forth all to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality of our search shall be the nature of the America that we create.”
So all those lonely years of seeking and praying were not in vain. How glad I was that I had not stopped at the husk, a good job, a good living! Through my inarticulate groping and reaching out I had found the soul, the spirit of America.