Hungry Hearts |
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Author:
| Yezierska, Anzia |
ISBN: | 978-1-4921-7604-6 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2013 |
Publisher: | CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $7.99 |
Book Description:
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The Yale Literary Magazine, Volume 86, 1921: THE statement that the Russian immigrant is one of our country's most serious problems has long since become a platitude. In lengthy statistical tabulations and philosophical inquiries into the significance of difference in shape of skull between native and foreign born children, we are familiar with him as we are with the anthropoid gorilla and the ictheosaurus. But as a real human being how many of us can boast a...
More Description The Yale Literary Magazine, Volume 86, 1921:
THE statement that the Russian immigrant is one of our country's most serious problems has long since become a platitude. In lengthy statistical tabulations and philosophical inquiries into the significance of difference in shape of skull between native and foreign born children, we are familiar with him as we are with the anthropoid gorilla and the ictheosaurus. But as a real human being how many of us can boast a genuine acquaintance with the immigrant? Very few. Of that which brought him here, the suffering and oppression in his native country, the hunger for freedom, opportunity, life, the "dead generations whose faith though beaten back still presses on," and the vision of the golden land of promise across the Atlantic-of this side of his nature we know very little. In the ten short stories of this book Miss Yezierska lets us feel the throb of his heart and the catch in his breath as dazed and friendless he is toppled into the midst of New York for the first time, and fears that America, after all, is not quite the honey land of his dreams. The author stages her characters with rare dramatic art. Gedalyeh, the pushcart man, who rejoices that his net profit of two dollars daily now gives him indisputable right to the title of "business man" with "mister" attached; and Shenah, the sweatshop girl, who lives in a room "scarcely large enough for a push-in of one person" and dreams of college heroes are not the wax tableaux figures nor the Punch and Judy puppets usually seen in stories of Ghetto life, but Miss Yezierska's real neighbors across the alley. "The Fat of the Land," which appeared in Harpers', was selected by Edward J. O'Brien as by far the best piece of imaginative fiction of the year. Other stories well worth reading are "Wings," "The Lost Beautifulness," and "How I Found America," which gives the dark setting for the drama of immigration.
The Bookman: A Review of Books and Life, Volume 52, 1921:
These stories of the East Side reek with the aching passion of a lonely girl, and with the scent of herrings and onions. No more powerful indictment of certain phases of the immigration problem could have been penned. In "The Lost Beautifulness", this woman of the garment workers has written a really great piece of interpretative literature. The primal distrust and hate of the landlord, pride in home and family, the unanswerable despair of poverty: all these stand out in this picture of the soldier who returns home to find his mother with her household goods sitting in the street- dispossessed. Miss Yezierska's idiom is excellent. It would be a pity if she turned to a more polished formula.