Immigrant Views on Being American

Abstract: A 6 page essay that explores 2 works. Yoshiko Uchida's memoir Desert Exile (1982) and Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers (1925). In these books, readers encounter the accounts of two women, each descended from first generation immigrants to America, each facing prejudice and obstacles and each coming to terms with the difficulty of being of ethnic origin in Protestant, Anglo American culture. Uchida's book is a personal memoir and while Yezierska's text is fictional, it nevertheless draws on her own Polish background and accurately reflects Jewish immigrant life in the first half of the twentieth century. While the two works address different eras and different ethnicity, they are similar in that each woman comes to terms with her own definition of what it means to be American. No additional sources cited.

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Catagory:

Subcatagory: Biographies

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