Promised Land (Modern Library) - Tapa blanda

1. The narrative of The Promised Land is split nearly evenly between an account of Antin's life 'within the Pale' (where Jews were geographically confined), in Polotzk, and an account of her life in the United States. What are the significant differences between the community life of Polotzk and that of the poor sections of Boston and Chelsea where Antin lived? What are the differences in perceptions and expectations about community in these two places? 2. When Antin describes Sabbath evenings in Polotzk, she says of the excellence of the cheesecakes that were eaten with supper, 'It takes history to make such a cake.' What does she mean by this? And what is suggested here about the sense and weight of history to all those who live in Polotzk? What role does history play in the collective identity? 3. Antin's own relationship to the history of her people is of course a complicated one. How do her attitude and feelings about the historical circumstances into which she was born and about her Jewishness change over the course of the book? When Antin arrives in the United States, she was-as she herself says-'made over' through 'all the processes of uprooting, transportation, replanting, acclimatization, and development [that] took place in [her] own soul.' She is faced with her identity's duality: her Jewishness on the one hand, her newfound American citizenship on the other. What are some examples of her grappling with this duality? What do they say, more broadly, about the plight of the immigrant? How does Antin incorporate the American ideals of citizenship, equal opportunity, and freedom into her life? 4. How are the changing attitudes of Antin's parents toward their religion different from or similar to Antin's own? How do An-tin's and her parents' attitudes toward both the ritualistic and philosophical aspects of Judaism change over the course of her narrative and through the process of immigration and assimilation? 5. What role does Antin's gender play in the molding of her identity? How does she feel about her place as a woman in Polotzk and, then, in early-twentieth-century America? Can she be considered a protofeminist of some sort, or is she more focused on other aspects of her identity? 6. Throughout her narrative, Antin mentions that her story speaks for many thousands of immigrants who have not, for different reasons, written stories of their own. Antin at one point writes, 'The tongue am I of those who lived before me, as those that are to come will be the voice of my unspoken thoughts.' What insights do you think Antin's story sheds on questions about immigration and assimilation in modern American society?

Jules Chametzky is Professor of English, Emeritus, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is an editor and founder of The Massachusetts Review and author of "From the Ghetto: the Fiction of Abraham Cahan and Our Decentralized Literature." He recently edited "The Rise of David Levinsky" and was co-editor of "Jewish American Literature: a Norton Anthology." He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Mary Antin was born in June of 1881 in Polotzk, White Russia (what is now Belarus). She emigrated from Polotzk to Boston with her family in 1894, when she was thirteen. Her first book, describing her voyage from Russia to the United States, was published in 1899. "The Promised Land" was a bestseller when it was first published in 1912.