The Promised Land

Mary Antin was born in 1881 in Polotsk, in the Russian Empire, where Jews were confined by law to the Pale of Settlement and lived under constant restrictions and fear. She describes her childhood there with warmth and sharp detail: the family's religion, the market, the school she could barely attend, and the dream of America. At thirteen she emigrated with her family to Boston, where the free public school opened a new world to her: she learned English with passion, published a poem in a newspaper, and became, as she says, a new person.

Antin published the book in 1912, and it became one of the most widely read accounts of the immigrant experience in the United States, used in schools to teach the meaning of citizenship. Its hopeful view of America is balanced by the harder stories of Anzia Yezierska's Hungry Hearts.