Author | Anzia Yezierska |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Published | 1922 (Boni & Liveright) |
Salome of the Tenements is a novel published in 1922 by Jewish-American writer Anzia Yezierska. [1] The novel follows the story of a young Jewish immigrant living in New York who wishes to marry a wealthy man and escape the bounds of her lower-class upbringing. [2] Yezierska drew inspiration for the novel from the lives of Rose Pastor Stokes and her husband J. G. Phelps Stokes, as well as her own relationship with John Dewey. The novel was published by Boni & Liveright, and it was adapted into a film of the same name in 1925.
The novel's main character, Sonya Vrunsky, is the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants living in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. At the beginning of the novel, Sonya is working as a journalist at a local Jewish newspaper, however she yearns to escape the lower-class world of the immigrant community. [2] She sets her sights on marrying a wealthy, Christian man, named John Manning, who lives in the much wealthier and upper-class Upper East Side of Manhattan. Sonya uses her ethnic background as a Russian Jew to portray herself as exotic and exciting, which ends up being, as she had hoped, appealing to John. [2] Eventually, Sonya and John become married. Once married, however, Sonya soon realizes that the kind of life that she had desires for so long is not what she initially thought it would be like. Sonya leaves John, and by the end of the novel, Sonya has found a successful career as a fashion designer and has married a fellow designer whom she truly loves. [2]
When first published, Salome of the Tenements received a wide variety of reviews. Some praised Yezierska's writing style and admired how the novel depicted immigrant communities that were often under-represented in literature. On the other hand, many critics found Sonya's attempt to pull herself up out of poverty by marrying a rich man to be both shocking and off-putting.[ citation needed ]
Hester Street is a street in the Lower East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It stretches from Essex Street to Centre Street, with a discontinuity between Chrystie Street and Forsyth Street for Sara Delano Roosevelt Park. There is also a discontinuity at Allen Street, which was created in 2009 with the rebuilding of the Allen Street Mall. At Centre Street, Hester Street shifts about 100 feet (30 m) to the north and is called Howard Street to its far western terminus at Mercer Street.
Daniel Deronda is a novel written by English author George Eliot, first published in eight parts (books) from 12 February to 9 September 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the Victorian society of her day. The work's mixture of social satire and moral searching, along with its sympathetic rendering of Jewish proto-Zionist ideas, has made it the controversial final statement of one of the most renowned Victorian novelists.
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Historically, it was understood to encompass a much larger area, from Broadway to the East River and from East 14th Street to Fulton and Franklin Streets.
Anzia Yezierska was a Jewish-American novelist born in Mały Płock, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. She emigrated as a child with her parents to the United States and lived in the immigrant neighborhood of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Adele Wiseman was a Canadian author.
Jetta Goudal was a Dutch-American actress, successful in Hollywood films of the silent film era.
Salome of the Tenements is a 1925 American silent drama film adapted to the screen by Sonya Levien from the Anzia Yezierska novel of the same name. Made by Jesse L. Lasky and Adolph Zukor's Famous Players–Lasky Corporation, a division of Paramount Pictures, it was directed by Sidney Olcott and starred Jetta Goudal and Godfrey Tearle.
Jubilee Trail is an American novel written by Gwen Bristow, published in 1950. It follows the adventures of two strong women in the mid-19th century as they travel across the United States to the then-Mexican territory of California. The novel is still in print, with forewords included by Nancy E. Turner and Sandra Dallas.
Rags is a musical with a book by Joseph Stein, lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, and music by Charles Strouse.
Early Autumn is a 1926 novel by Louis Bromfield. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1927. In 1956, producer Benedict Bogeaus announced that he was adapting the book into a film to be titled "Conquest," but the film was never made.
Bread Givers is a 1925 three-volume novel by Jewish-American author Anzia Yezierska; the story of a young girl growing up in an immigrant Jewish household in the Lower East Side of New York City. Her parents are from Poland in the Russian Empire.
Daughter of Earth (1929) is an autobiographical novel by the American author and journalist Agnes Smedley. The novel chronicles the years of Marie Rogers's tumultuous childhood, struggles in relationships with men, time working with the Socialist Party, and involvement in the Indian independence movement.
Cecelia Ager was an American film critic and star reporter for Variety and the New York Times Magazine.
Sonya Levien was a Russian-born American screenwriter. She became one of the highest earning female screenwriters in Hollywood in the 1930s and would help a number of directors and film stars transition from silent films to talkies. In 1955 she received an Academy Award for her screenplay Interrupted Melody.
Rita Hernandez de Alba de Acosta Stokes Lydig was an American socialite named by one observer as "the most picturesque woman in America." She was photographed by Adolf de Meyer, Edward Steichen, and Gertrude Käsebier, sculpted in alabaster by Malvina Hoffman, and was painted by Giovanni Boldini and John Singer Sargent, among others.
Hungry Hearts (1922) is an American film based on stories by Anzia Yezierska about Jewish immigrants to the Lower East Side of New York City. The film was directed by E. Mason Hopper, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, and starred Helen Ferguson and E. Alyn Warren.
Hungry Hearts is a collection of short stories by Jewish/American writer Anzia Yezierska first published in 1920. The short stories deal with the European Jewish immigrant experience from the perspective of fictional female Jews, each story depicting a different aspect of their trials and tribulations in poverty in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. The stories were adapted into a film of the same name.
Rose Gollup Cohen (1880–1925) was a writer. She grew up in a village in the Russian Empire, immigrated to America with her aunt Masha in 1892 to join her father, and lived on New York City's Lower East Side. She worked in a garment sweatshop, joined a union, and also worked as a domestic servant. She suffered from poor health, and was at one point visited by Lillian Wald, who sent her to uptown Presbyterian Hospital, where she met people who sponsored summer outings for immigrant children. She then worked summers at a Connecticut retreat. Wald also referred her to a cooperative shirtwaist shop directed by Leonora O'Reilly, and when O'Reilly began teaching at the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in 1902, she recruited Cohen as her assistant.
Suzanne Wasserman, was a Chicago-born historian, Professor, writer, and film director. Besides her tenure as Director of the Gotham Center for New York City history, she was also known for her first film, completed in 2003, Thunder in Guyana, which she wrote, produced, and directed. The film documented the life of her mother's first cousin, Chicago-born Janet Rosenberg Jagan, the president of Guyana from 1997 to 1999.
Alexandra "Sasha" Kropotkin (1887–1966) was a New York-based writer and Russian language translator. Born in British exile to the Russian scientist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin, the socially prominent family returned to Russia from the 1917 revolution through his death several years later. Upon moving to New York, in her women's column byline she retained the royal honorific ("princess") that her father, a descendant of Kropotkin nobility, had disowned. She translated Russian literature into English and wrote a Russian cookbook that The New York Times considered best-in-class.