While reading Bread Givers, I enjoyed the first-person perspective offered in the novel. Contrasting from the previous books we read of this same time period, it followed one family rather than a whole immigrant group. While I recognized some of the facts of immigrant hardships, they were made more personal with a backstory- the backstory of Sara Smolinsky. For example, her father, Reb Smolinsky made the conscious decision to not send Sara to school until after she was ten years old. While most families had children and sent them to work in factories from the age of six, Reb allowed her to gain a basic education before sending her off to earn wages for the family, despite their extreme poverty. This was one of the few good decisions that he makes. Reb Smolinsky was quite the character because he was constantly contracting himself. He revolved these contradictions around his scripture, twisting the words and excerpts to suit his aim. I find it extremely frustrating that noone had recognized his tyrant ways before it was too late.

Looking at the book from a modern viewpoint, many of the things that occur in this book that I deem unbelievable were probably common events tied into the time period and immigrant theme. It seems that all of the daughters of Reb Smolinsky represented the different ways that women fit into immigrant society. Although unfortunate, Anzia Yezierska does an excellent job of expressing the emotions and situations that the immigrants lived in. To me, this account is far more provoking than previous readings because it is more effective in making the reader see the true living conditions of immigrants in 20th century New York.

Bread Givers by Yezierska is about a young woman who is struggling to find her place in a new society. Born to a poverty stricken family, she has to take on the responsibility of an adult at a young age. Though the story in set in an earlier time in New York some of the circumstance that she has to face are still issues that families migrating to the city, today, have to overcome. Sarah the narrator and protagonist grew up with a father that was very religious. He devoted a lot of time to his religion and this was reflected in his views and how he raised his girls. He wanted his daughters to share the same ideas and belief as him. However, this was not the case. Sarah and her sisters were growing up in a society that was different from the one that her father grew up in. The clashing of new world and old world ideas was a cause for the divisions and ultimately the separation of the family. Similarly today many families that come to the city from other countries have to now face the change about what role religion will play in their life and that of their children. Will the new world ideas out rank the traditions?

Sarah growing up in poverty, knew that she wanted a change for her future that was beyond her time. In her family the women were the ones that worked and took care of the bills. It was engraved in them by their father that needed to be married, to be wives and mothers. Sarah ultimately leaves her home and her parents. By doing so she gives herself a “bad name” because this was not the norm. Never the less she did it because she wanted more meaning and an education in life. Many women of the time did not seem to value this. Similar to Stansell New York Bohemia, Sarah was the new woman of the time. She forgoes all traditions to peruse her education and to be a teacher, a face of the generation that was to come.

One thing I found refreshing about Bread Givers, by Anzia Yezierska, is its personal spin on understanding the immigrant way of life in the early twentieth century. After reading the two, dry, fact- based, historical books on NYC at the turn of the twentieth century; this novel made the ideas expressed in those books more real. From the beginning you already start to feel for young Sara as she describes her family’s financial struggles, and how they affect the mood of the house. It gives over a more visual and real understanding of the poverty of the immigrants spoken about in All the Nations Under Heaven. Bread Givers also gave me a better understanding of what made the Lower East Side, a place of attraction for those who were looking to create a new Bohemian neighborhood in American Moderns.

With all that being said, one thing that sparked my interest about Bread Givers is the delusions of Sara’s father, Reb Smolinsky. It seems to that it should be obvious to any sane person that Reb Smolinsky’s actions are completely immoral and wrong. However, he is so caught up in his religious beliefs that he can’t see it. He believes that he is doing what God wants and therefore, what human has right to question. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that this is an exaggeration of the facts. It is hard for me to believe that anyone could be so blind as Reb Smolinsky is when it comes to his family and money. Although I’m sure there must have been many cultural differences that led to friction between immigrant parents and their Americanized children, it is hard to believe such a case as this.

In conclusion, I felt that this book did a good job of bringing to light the personal day to day struggles of immigrants at the turn of the century, especially those of their Americanized children. However, I believe that Yezierska might have exaggerated the story a little too much in trying to get this feeling across.

Bread Givers is a wonderfully detailed and honest story about a poor Jewish family living in 1920s New York City. I found this story to be particularly compelling because it felt very real. It was based on Yezierska’s life, which is definitely a major factor in the honest telling of the story. This book deals with a lot of issues that were not only prevalent at the time, but ones that are present today. Specifically, the struggles that immigrant families go through and female independence vs. family dependence.

The father of the Smolinsky family, Reb, is constantly concerned with how much money his daughters are bringing into the household, but restricts their freedom to make their own life decisions, like who they want to marry, whether or not they want to go to school, and others. The relationship between Sarah and her father was one that really stood out as being very tumultuous and unsteady throughout the book. I found myself really sympathizing for Sarah when she was constantly criticized by Reb for her life decisions when all she was doing was trying to succeed and make a life for herself, while at the same time supporting her family. Sarah’s going to school made her a new kind of woman that was emerging at the time–an educated, free woman who makes choices for herself. However her father was the constant restrictive force of the patriarchy, which was both angering and saddening. Every time that Reb criticized her, my heart ached because I knew that she was just a spirit that needed freedom but still loved her family enough to provide for them in the best way she could. This book definitely says a lot about women and the challenges they faced during this time, and especially those of poor, immigrant women, who probably faced the toughest challenges of all.

When I read Bread Givers, I was engrossed by the debilitating circumstances that the Smolinsky had to endure. Even if the daughters sought relief from their suffocating lifestyles, it seemed that their father’s unyielding grasp on their future vanquished any hope to pursue their own interests. This tragedy is largely due to the distinct generational chasm between the father and his children. While he is stubborn in keeping with traditions from his home country, Poland, the children observe and yearn for the independent, indulgent way of life that was so popularized in America. Although poverty, racism, gender inequalities, and much more prevented these immigrant children from advancing to a greater extent, it was their link to their inflexible past and culture that more significantly precluded their pursuits of happiness.

Bread Givers. The title itself has an interesting twist: Although Sara’s father is supposed to be the “bread giver” of his family, his weary, overworked daughters are the ones who struggle for the sustenance of the household. Yet, in the end–almost as if Yezierkska incorporates an ironic spin– her father is forced to lay aside his esoteric contemplation and begin to peddle goods during his last years of his life. “Bread Givers” also has another relatively metaphoric dimension to its meaning. In the father’s perspective, the “bread” that the he feeds his children is the Word, or the Torah, is more important than that which nourishes the physical body. So, in this sense, he is in fact the true “Bread Giver.” But rather than bringing forth beneficial results in his daughters’ lives, the “bread” that he provides exacerbates the dynamics of the family. Aside from his youngest, Sara, who blatantly denies the bread he gives her, all of his other daughters succumb and listen to his relentless preaching.

The history texts that we have read previously may do a good job illustrating the story of immigrant groups, and of highlighting individual success stories. However the story of the group tells little of an average individual’s day to day life, and the success stories are 1 in a million type cases that don’t capture the toil and drudgery required to climb to the top. Bread Givers may be fiction, but it is based on Anzia Yezierska’s experiences as a woman who eventually found success coming from the Jewish Lower East Side. I found Sara’s story to be both tremendously sad at times, for the fates of her sisters and her family’s everyday struggles captured a reality shared by many immigrants, but also to be inspiring. Sara captured the idea of the American Dream: she rose from poverty to obtain a college education and career success, becoming, as she says “a real person”. Yet her story doesn’t neglect the particular heart break hidden in the American Dream–as Sara becomes Americanized, she neglects cultural tradition and even family. In leaving behind poverty, Sara leaves an ancient history behind in order to forge a new one. This is not to say that she completely abandons her culture, but rather to point out that she changes from the Old World with its strict traditions to the New World’s ways, and that while she gains much, including, finally, a sense of personal pride and independence, she does lose something as well.

I really enjoyed Anzia Yezierska’s book Bread Givers. The storyline was so raw and real and I felt that the struggles presented in the story of immigrant women were true for every ethnicity during that time. Before beginning the actual story I read Alice Kessler Harris’ introduction, and one particular sentence that stood out to me was when Yezierska’s daughter was reminiscing about her mother and said: “It was not so much that she was a feminist…she was just herself.” I’m glad she said this because I don’t think we can simply label Yezierska as a feminist. The same goes for the main character in the book, Sara Smolinsky. In the book through her experiences and struggles, she took on everything and set mottos that she lived by. Don’t settle for less, be independent, etc. These beliefs were the products of her experiences and in the end she was who she was, and I realized how much I hate the word feminist. I feel like every woman who has fought for herself and paved the way for a better life were just being themselves, and doing what they had to do to become their own person. They were who they were and hate that they are labeled feminists. Anzia Yezierska is Anzia Yezierska. Yes, a woman going to college and getting a job was unheard of and women had to fight for that right so it constituted for a new movement, the feminist movement, but I don’t like it when the word is used in this day in age. It reminds me of a time when women weren’t treated as equals. It generalizes in a way that I feel doesn’t give enough credit to who these women actually were. They were ahead of their time, they weren’t fighting for women’s right because they knew they already had them.