Hungry Hearts - Signet Classic Author:Anzia Yezierska The first book published by a Jewish-American woman writer, Hungry Hearts provides a timeless portrayal of the immigrant experience of struggle and displacement, loneliness and desire. Published in 1920, the book became a sensation, sweeping Anzia Yezierska to a brief fame. Seen from a contemporary perspective, this extraordinary "lost" masterpi... more »ece is even richer and more psychologically astute today. It brilliantly captures the distinction of a woman's immigrant experience: her dreams of making it in a new land, of social betterment, and of happiness invariably tied to being valued, or not valued, by a man or by her family.
All ten original stories are reprinted here, the intensity of their fiery emotional prose undimmed today. In the opening story, Wings," the author's own thwarted love for educator John Dewey is thinly disguised in a tale rife with irony, hurt, and anger. In "The Fat of the Land," the tragicomic figure of tenement wife Hanneh Breineh evolves from the stock character of a Jewish mother to a woman unable to free herself from the world of her own mind. And in all the stories, set in New York's teeming Lower East Side, the mothers, sisters, and lonely young women come alive to mirror who we were and who we are.« less