A collection of ten short stories portraying immigrant life in 1920s New York City by the acclaimed Jewish American author of Bread Givers. Anzia Yezierska, known as the &“Cinderella of the Tenements,&” calls upon her own background as a child of immigrants who worked in sweatshops on Manhattan&’s Lower East Side to bring to life stories of women struggling to survive in similar circumstances. From a hardworking woman who becomes the target of her children&’s scorn and indifference when they find success to the young mother and her family who are subjected to humiliating rules and circumstances when offered a vacation in the country, these are tales of women who strive, dream, and fight to hold on to their dignity and identity in a harsh reality. &“Coping with scholarly dependents and chiseling landlords, chafed by the class system, ravenous for learning and desperate for beauty, Anzia Yezierska&’s protagonists have emotions they express in great, big, attention-getting gestures. . . . Louis B. Mayer was so taken by Yezierska&’s stories he brought her to Hollywood: The film adapted from Hungry Hearts is about as loud as silent cinema gets.&” —Tablet, &“101 Great Jewish Books&” &“Poverty makes no one eloquent, and lack of opportunity to learn leaves its scars. Yezierska, despite her literary faults, is a remarkable writer, a recorder of a history that still is attached to us, that still follows us like a shadow.&” —The Los Angeles Times &“These stories . . . are, in fact, slices of life as much as fiction, in that tradition of American social realism which harks back to Dreiser.&” —The Irish Times
