Page 10-THE NEWS-January 1989
Anzia Yezierska: A
Writer*8 Life. Louise Lev-
itas Henriksen. Rutgers Uni
versity Press, 109 Church
Street, New Brunswick, NJ
08903. 327 pages. $20.95.
Love in the Promised
Land: The Story of Anzia
Yezierska and John
Dewey. Mary V. Dearborn.
The Free Press, 866 Third
Avenue, New York, NY
10022. 212 pages. $22.95.
Red Ribbon on a White
Horse . Anzia Yezierska.
Persea Books, 225 Lafayette
Street, New York, NY 10012.
228 pages. $9.95 (paper
back).
Reviewed by Diane Cole
All too often, once a wri
ter’s works go out of print,
the author is forgotten. In
recent years, though, read
ers and scholars alike have
rediscovered Anzia Yezi
erska, a long neglected wri
ter whose short stories, nov
els, and autobiographical
works vividly depict the
“world of our mothers” of
New York’s Lower East Side.
Two new biographies —
Anzia Yezierska: A Writer*s
Life by Yezierska’s daugh
ter, Louise Levitas Hen
riksen, and Love in the
Promised Land: The Story of
Anzia Yezierska and John
Dewey hy Mary V. Dearborn
— shed still more light on
Yezierska’s world. When
read beside the author’s
semi-fictional memoir. Red
Ribbon on a White Horse
(newly reissued by Persea),
they tell a story that seems
emblematic of many an
immigrant’s struggle for
success in the New Land of
America.
Yezierska was bom about
1880 in a village outside
Warsaw, the daughter of a
Talmudic scholar with
whom she battled for inde
pendence throughout her
childhood and adolescence.
In the early 1890s, the family
emigrated to New York,
where Anzia worked as a
servant and then in the
sweatshops before winning
a scholarship to Columbia
Teachers College.
A college education would
be her ticket out of the ghetto
— or so she thought. Dis
criminated against because
of her unpolished manner,
she was turned down for
many teaching positions —
a slight that stung despite
the fact that she did not
particularly enjoy the pro
fession. Domestic life did not
appeal either: her first mar
riage was annulled after less
than a year. Her second fell
apart shortly after the birth
of her daughter, Louise.
Determined to succeed as
MaryV
Dearixx^n
Love
IN THE
Promised!
Land
from the Lower East Side.
She returned to New York
and to her stories, but her
/y\ , popularity gradually faded,
^ 1970, she was virtually
forgotten.
Yezierska dramatized
much of this struggle in her
various novels and short
stories, nowhere more poig
nantly than in her master
piece, i2edf2i7>boji on a White
Horse. But Yezierska, we
leam from her biographers,
was more complex than her
self-portrait initially sug
gests. In temperament, she
was passionate, sometimes
histrionic, and all too often
exasperatingly difficult.
And though she liked to
maintain the image of her
self as an unknown, self-
taught “primitivist” writer
who was discovered over
night, she took writing
classes at Columbia and
spent many years polishing
her craft. And when her
work appeared in a national
publication at last, it was
with the assistance of none
other than John Dewey.
Yes, John Dewey, the well-
known Yankee philosopher
and educational reformer. In
fact, Mary V. Dearborn tells
us in her fascinating dual
biography, Yezierska and
Dewey had an intense,
though probably unconsum
mated, romantic relation
ship. Afterwards, Yezierska
reworked her thwarted
encounter with the New
England philosopher again
and again in her fiction —
stories in which “coM
blooded” American-born
men dally with, but ulti-
a writer, Yezierska left
Louise in her ex-husband’s
custody and set out on her
lonely course. Then, in 1920,
with the publication of her
first collection of short sto
ries, Yezierska won even
more recognition than she
could have hoped for, when
Samuel Goldwyn bought her
stories for the movies and
invited her to Hollywood.
Success can mean differ
ent things to different peo
ple, though, and to
Yezierska, a daughter of the
ghetto, Hollywood was an
alien world of wealth and
pretense. In her expensive
new clothes, she wrote, she
felt herself both a stranger
in polite society and an exile
ately abandon the ardent,
dreamy immigrant women
who both attract and
frighten them. The poten
tially rewarding but ulti
mately fhistrating encoun
ter between America’s Old
and New Worlds thus
became Yezierska’s central
artistic theme.
If there is a central theme
to Louise Levitas Hen-
riksen’s poignant, some
times painfully truthful
biography-memoir of her
mother, it is that of a daugh
ter’s attempt to capture, on
paper, a personality that
eluded her in life. “Out of
loneliness and despair she
made art. When I was a
small child, I chose her
against my father and never
changed my allegiance,”
Henriksen writes. “But
whenever I was with her,
close up, and fighting, she
was always infuriating,
demanding too much. Only
now, in her absence, can I
come this close to her
again.”
Yezierska’s readers will be
grateful for her attempt.
•
Diane Cole is a firequent
reviewer for national publi
cations. She is the author of
Hun ting the Headh un ters: A
Woman^s Guide (Fireside/
Simon & Schuster).
JLUB
Is a service of the
JWB Jewish Book Council
15 East 26th Street
New York, N.Y. 10010
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