Anzia Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers and Assimilation of Jews Essay

Anzia Yezierskas novel Bread Givers and Assimilation of JewsAn entire chapter of Eric Lius memoir, The Accidental Asian, is founded on the supposition that Jews now serve as a metaphor for assimilation into American culture. According to Liu, this is due to the ease with which Jews have been able to assimilate. However, the progress that Jews have made in embracing and affecting America has been gradual rather than instantaneous, as evidenced by the character Sara Smolensky in Anzia Yezierskas novel Bread Givers. Sara is not the emblem of an assimilated Jew, but instead represents a period of transition between complete assimilation into American identity and complete dissimilation from her Jewish and Polish heritage, incomplete of which she can fully accomplish. Her identity was both made and unmade by her interaction with America, and she is left struggling for a new self that can meander her ancestral past and her American present. Perhaps the best example of Sara s deviation from her Jewish heritage and her attempt to assimilate was her refusal to allow the undertaker to cull her suit during her mothers funeral service. The clothing that she wears is a symbol to her of wealth and of being an American. For Sara the ripping of her clothing had become an empty symbol, a cultural look with only symbolic meaning that could help to identify her ethnicity, and does not serve any logical purpose. After being distanced from her family and immersed in American culture for so long, she no longer understands the purpose of the action, and posits verily that Tearing her only suit wouldnt bring Mother back to life again (Yezierska 255). This represents a clear tubercle between volunta... ...rself in between the two, and in doing so partially unmakes the ethnic identity passed on to her from her ancestors. The question of whether she is more assimilated into American culture or is more dissimilated from the culture of her ancestors is arbitrary an d ambiguous. She is simultaneously both and neither she is a new person who enjoys the American way of life but will always incur burdened by the weight of her ancestors upon her (297).Works CitedLiu, Eric. New Jews. The Accidental Asian. New York Vintage Books, 1998. 145-74.Sollors, Werner. Forward. Theories of American Ethnicity. American Quarterly. 33.3 (1981) 257-83. Takaki, Ronald. Between Two Endless Days. A assorted Mirror A History of Multicultural America. Boston Little, Brown and Co., 1993. 277-310.Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. New York Persea Books, 2003.