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The Promised Land
Interweaving introspection with political commentaries, biography with history, The Promised Land (1912) brings to life the transformation of an East European Jewish immigrant into an American citizen. Mary Antin recounts "the process of uprooting, transportation, replanting, acclimitization, and development that took place in my own soul," and reveals the impact of a new culture and new standards of behavior on her family. A feeling of divisions—between Russia and America, Jews and Gentiles, Yiddish and English—ever-present in her narrative, is balanced by insights, amusing and serious, into ways to overcome them. In telling the story of one person, The Promised Land illuminates the lives of hundreds of thousands. This Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition includes eighteen black-and-white photographs from the book's first edition and reprints for the first time Antin's essay "How I wrote The Promised Land ."
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1912
About the author
Mary Antin
45 books4 followersBorn to a Jewish family in Polotsk, Mary Antin immigrated to the Boston area with her mother and siblings in 1894, moving from Chelsea to Ward 8 in Boston's South End, a notorious slum, as the venue of her father's store changed. ... Antin is best known for her 1912 autobiography The Promised Land, which describes her public school education and assimilation into American culture, as well as life for Jews in Czarist Russia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
February 23, 2020
"The Promised Land" by Mary Antin was published 1912, and it narrates the story of a Jewish family immigrating from Russia to the united States..
In fact it is the autobiography of Antin, she put it in this way: " I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over.."
A very touching and beautiful written autobiography which reads like a novel!!
My paperback edition contains an awesome introduction by Werner Sollors, and also reproductions of 18 black-and-white photographs from the book first edition..
Also included are the two short stories "Malinka's Atonement" and "The Lie"..
I've enjoyed it indeed, a very enlightened book by which I have learn so much!!
I'm happy to have come across this beauty because it has given me something important for my understanding of immigrants and the value of education..
I do recommend it to all of you who are interested in Jewish history and would like to read an interesting and gripping biography!!
Happy readings..
Dean;)
In fact it is the autobiography of Antin, she put it in this way: " I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over.."
A very touching and beautiful written autobiography which reads like a novel!!
My paperback edition contains an awesome introduction by Werner Sollors, and also reproductions of 18 black-and-white photographs from the book first edition..
Also included are the two short stories "Malinka's Atonement" and "The Lie"..
I've enjoyed it indeed, a very enlightened book by which I have learn so much!!
I'm happy to have come across this beauty because it has given me something important for my understanding of immigrants and the value of education..
I do recommend it to all of you who are interested in Jewish history and would like to read an interesting and gripping biography!!
Happy readings..
Dean;)
January 25, 2011
MAYBE THE BEST MEMOIR I’VE EVER READ.
“I have never had a dull hour in my life…”—page 246
I like memoirs. I like stories, especially first-hand accounts, of the immigrant experience in America. I particularly like stories about the lives of bright and determined people.
Mary Antin’s memoir, ‘The Promised Land,’ delivers full measure, on all of this and more.
From the first half of the book, as a young girl in the settlements of the Russian Pale, to her early adolescence as an immigrant in and around Boston, Massachusetts, in the late nineteenth century, this is a clearly written, energetically compelling, richly enlightening and very enjoyable classic read.
Recommendation: The very highest. (And it’s available as a digital book from either Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.com, for only 99¢.)
I think I would have very much liked meeting this lady:
“I became a student and philosopher by force of circumstances.”—page 6
“It was not my way to accept unchallenged every superstition that came to my ears.”—page 60
NookBook from Barnes and Noble, 258 pages. [Originally published in 1912.]
“I have never had a dull hour in my life…”—page 246
I like memoirs. I like stories, especially first-hand accounts, of the immigrant experience in America. I particularly like stories about the lives of bright and determined people.
Mary Antin’s memoir, ‘The Promised Land,’ delivers full measure, on all of this and more.
From the first half of the book, as a young girl in the settlements of the Russian Pale, to her early adolescence as an immigrant in and around Boston, Massachusetts, in the late nineteenth century, this is a clearly written, energetically compelling, richly enlightening and very enjoyable classic read.
Recommendation: The very highest. (And it’s available as a digital book from either Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.com, for only 99¢.)
I think I would have very much liked meeting this lady:
“I became a student and philosopher by force of circumstances.”—page 6
“It was not my way to accept unchallenged every superstition that came to my ears.”—page 60
NookBook from Barnes and Noble, 258 pages. [Originally published in 1912.]
April 3, 2019
3 stars.
I read The Promised Land for my history courses, so I'm not going to review. I did enjoy this, though, just not as much as I expected to. I wasn't a huge fan of Mary Antin's writing, so it was a little hard to get through this one.
“Had I been brought to America a few years earlier, I might have written that in such and such a year my father emigrated, just as I would state what he did for a living, as a matter of family history. Happening when it did, the emigration became of the most vital importance to me personally. All the processes of uprooting, transportation, replanting, acclimatization, and development took place in my own soul. I felt the pang, the fear, the wonder, and the joy of it. I can never forget, for I bear the scars.”
I read The Promised Land for my history courses, so I'm not going to review. I did enjoy this, though, just not as much as I expected to. I wasn't a huge fan of Mary Antin's writing, so it was a little hard to get through this one.
March 10, 2016
In the introduction to this, the autobiography of her youth and emigration from Russia to America in the decades straddling the 19th and 20th centuries, Mary Antin writes:
'Although I have written a genuine personal memoir, I believe that its chief interest lies in the fact that it is illustrative of scores of unwritten lives. I am only one of many whose fate it has been to live a page of modern history. We are the strands of the cable that binds the Old World to the New.'
And, of course, it is a story familiar to countless thousands of lives: the story of the exile from certain prejudice to the immigrant of uncertain ones.
Yet Mary is, above all else, every inch the individualist. A fervent believer in, and living embodiment of the American Dream, over the course of her memoir Mary also reveals herself to be an atheist, as well as something of an enemy of what she refers to as the 'pet institution' of family.
Such free-thinking unconventionality would have been impossible for a young Jewish girl from Polotzk, a ghettoized region 'within the Pale' of Zsarist Russia.
Jewish communities were highly regimented, with the sons destined to study the Torah at 'heder'(scripture school), and daughters attached to dowries in search of a favourable marriage from an early age.
Safe from pogroms in Polotzk but still routinely abused by Gentiles, she grew up literally afraid of the Christian cross, behind which the priests would incite the peasants to violence, 'insisting that we had killed their God'.
The Jews had to lie to get by, and as Mary notes: 'I knew how to dodge and cringe and dissemble before I knew the names of the seasons.'
So the Jews clung even closer to the comfort to be found in their ancient compact with God. But 'Mashke's' family were a little different, her father having abandoned his pious study after traveling to less orthodox places, her mother being a woman of business rather than of the home, so the makings of a willing exile were there in her parents, whose fortunes had also suffered a terrible reverse after a prosperous beginning.
Even so, outwardly at least it was too risky for a family to flaunt convention within the community, so Mary had no proscribed means of education while in Polotsk, despite her father's wishes and the occasional private lessons he could afford.
Whereas for her brother Joseph, who 'was the best Jewish boy that ever was born', his preordained lot only brought him suffering, for 'he hated to go to heder, so he had to be whipped, of course.'
That would change in America, of course.
But not straight away. The families financial difficulties hardly did improve, her father failing to lift them out of the Boston slums they started from, merely moving them from one quarter to another, always in hoc to landlords and grocers, some more understanding than others, i.e. those who happened to be fellow Jews.
But it's more than worth the struggle, to see how her mother 'gradually divested herself ... of the mantle of orthodox observance', and the joy of her father, reflected in the face of the teacher as he finally gets to deliver his children to the free school:
'I think she divined that by the simple act of delivering our school certificates to her he took possession of America'.
The least appealing part of the book was the constant patronization of her older sister, who had to work like an adult from an early age while Mary indulged herself in daydreams. If I were the sister, Frieda, I may have felt insulted by my sister's portrayal of me as someone whose 'simple mind did not busy itself with self-analysis'.
The best part of the book by far though, is the recollections of her girlhood in Polotsk. The stoicism in the face of abuse by authorities and neighbors, the dodges and coping mechanisms of an unfairly persecuted race, all offset by the solidarity and the sacredness of a family Sabbath celebration.
Sure, America's far from perfect; nor is my country, England.
But whenever I read immigrant literature, or see migrants interviewed on TV, talking about the racial persecution and lack of opportunity that they have faced in the countries of their birth, I can't help but feel that I am lucky to be a native of a land where I can succeed or fail, by and large, on my own terms, certainly without daily fear of subjection.
This is how Mary Antin characterizes the status of women in her adopted homeland:
'A long girlhood, a free choice in marriage, and a brimful womanhood are the precious rights of an American woman.'
She would have been denied all those basic rights if she had remained an orthodox Jewish girl in Polotsk, Russia. By writing this autobiography, at the age of just thirty, she wanted to give thanks for that and hope to others.
'Although I have written a genuine personal memoir, I believe that its chief interest lies in the fact that it is illustrative of scores of unwritten lives. I am only one of many whose fate it has been to live a page of modern history. We are the strands of the cable that binds the Old World to the New.'
And, of course, it is a story familiar to countless thousands of lives: the story of the exile from certain prejudice to the immigrant of uncertain ones.
Yet Mary is, above all else, every inch the individualist. A fervent believer in, and living embodiment of the American Dream, over the course of her memoir Mary also reveals herself to be an atheist, as well as something of an enemy of what she refers to as the 'pet institution' of family.
Such free-thinking unconventionality would have been impossible for a young Jewish girl from Polotzk, a ghettoized region 'within the Pale' of Zsarist Russia.
Jewish communities were highly regimented, with the sons destined to study the Torah at 'heder'(scripture school), and daughters attached to dowries in search of a favourable marriage from an early age.
Safe from pogroms in Polotzk but still routinely abused by Gentiles, she grew up literally afraid of the Christian cross, behind which the priests would incite the peasants to violence, 'insisting that we had killed their God'.
The Jews had to lie to get by, and as Mary notes: 'I knew how to dodge and cringe and dissemble before I knew the names of the seasons.'
So the Jews clung even closer to the comfort to be found in their ancient compact with God. But 'Mashke's' family were a little different, her father having abandoned his pious study after traveling to less orthodox places, her mother being a woman of business rather than of the home, so the makings of a willing exile were there in her parents, whose fortunes had also suffered a terrible reverse after a prosperous beginning.
Even so, outwardly at least it was too risky for a family to flaunt convention within the community, so Mary had no proscribed means of education while in Polotsk, despite her father's wishes and the occasional private lessons he could afford.
Whereas for her brother Joseph, who 'was the best Jewish boy that ever was born', his preordained lot only brought him suffering, for 'he hated to go to heder, so he had to be whipped, of course.'
That would change in America, of course.
But not straight away. The families financial difficulties hardly did improve, her father failing to lift them out of the Boston slums they started from, merely moving them from one quarter to another, always in hoc to landlords and grocers, some more understanding than others, i.e. those who happened to be fellow Jews.
But it's more than worth the struggle, to see how her mother 'gradually divested herself ... of the mantle of orthodox observance', and the joy of her father, reflected in the face of the teacher as he finally gets to deliver his children to the free school:
'I think she divined that by the simple act of delivering our school certificates to her he took possession of America'.
The least appealing part of the book was the constant patronization of her older sister, who had to work like an adult from an early age while Mary indulged herself in daydreams. If I were the sister, Frieda, I may have felt insulted by my sister's portrayal of me as someone whose 'simple mind did not busy itself with self-analysis'.
The best part of the book by far though, is the recollections of her girlhood in Polotsk. The stoicism in the face of abuse by authorities and neighbors, the dodges and coping mechanisms of an unfairly persecuted race, all offset by the solidarity and the sacredness of a family Sabbath celebration.
Sure, America's far from perfect; nor is my country, England.
But whenever I read immigrant literature, or see migrants interviewed on TV, talking about the racial persecution and lack of opportunity that they have faced in the countries of their birth, I can't help but feel that I am lucky to be a native of a land where I can succeed or fail, by and large, on my own terms, certainly without daily fear of subjection.
This is how Mary Antin characterizes the status of women in her adopted homeland:
'A long girlhood, a free choice in marriage, and a brimful womanhood are the precious rights of an American woman.'
She would have been denied all those basic rights if she had remained an orthodox Jewish girl in Polotsk, Russia. By writing this autobiography, at the age of just thirty, she wanted to give thanks for that and hope to others.
July 18, 2022
Sometimes two women in search of pails lay hold of the same pail at the same moment, and a wrangle ensues, in the course of which each disputant reminds the other of all her failings, nicknames, and undesirable connections, living, dead, and unborn; until an attendant interferes, with more muscle than argument, punctuating the sentence of justice with newly coined expletives suggested by the occasion.If there's one thing my country of birth is good at, it's setting up Potemkin "melting pots" by letting in just enough of the marginalized to make for a good song and dance but not so many that said temporary members of the elect can't be spat back out and/or digested and evacuated when the action proves most beneficial. Today it's the current VP and various other diverse representatives of the US kyriarchy, but in yesteryear when participants in the US civil war were still among the living, it was the odd immigrant schoolchild of the slums, extremely bright in the ways most suited to a capitalist meritocracy but not so much as to recognize the futility of overcoming one's status as dinner when one is not a member of the table. And so, when one Maryashe (surnames not of frequent usage) of Russia is called Mary Antin upon taking up residence in Russia, there is hardship, there is effort, there is joy, but all of it as close contained and handpicked nearly as much as is a typical set piece on the television show Sesame Street, as if it were possible to travel more than 4000 miles and have experiences as similar to, and as limited, that of a white child who resides their first 18 years in 20 mile radius of redlined suburbia. For me, this meant my enjoyment directly hinged on the amount of time the text spent beyond the borders of my country, for while that meant systematic depredation and abject poverty, at least I knew that, so long as the setting wasn't the US, the realities of such would be acknowledged. So, while I greedily imbibed the beginning and the middle in its form as an enjoyably novel yet still comfortably familiar incarnation of the (bildungs/künstler)roman, by the end, this piece had turned into blatant apologism, if not propaganda, for the author's precious military industrial complex, and the best I could do was get through it with as much contextualized equanimity as possible. It means that I'll write as fair a review as I can, but not that I'm going to question the work's low average rating much.
To be a Jew was a costly luxury, the price of which was either money or blood. is it any wonder that we hoarded our pennies?At the beginning, this work runs rather gloriously. The list of gaps in my knowledge in regards to history runs as long as the Congo and as deep as the Mariana Trench, and whenever I can fill in some of them in as insightful, unflinching, and rich a manner as Antin allows me to do in regards to being Jewish in Russia after the beginning of the 20th c. and before the Bolsheviks, I do so with especial pleasure. I rode out this rightfully engaged feeling as long as I could (even making note of the foreboding similarities between an anti-cholera mass shower Antin underwent in Germany while immigrating and what was to come for her people half a century later), but eventually that inquisitive gaze turned inward, that righteous distrust of the national system turned complacent, and Antin ended up just another white girl crowing over winning against a Black child in a US court of law. What makes it an extra shame is the knowledge, delved into to an appreciable degree by the introduction, of how the rest of Antin's life and career went during the convulsions of first WWI, where she fell out of the way of the US' aggression, and then WWII, when she and her people were consigned to the empire's bad faith negligence. So, if you're thinking about reading this, simply know that a happy ending will only come from stopping your read right where this text ends and never pursuing in any form a sequel or a description of subsequent events. Judging by the bursts of cynical self-mockery excerpted from Antin's later writings in the introduction, subsequent to this work's publication, she came to some breed of realization of how she had ultimately been played by her supposed saving grace of a country. It's an agonizing thing to contemplate if thought about it for too long, and while I would like to return to a more in depth view of Antin's later views (if tangentially through a biography of her rather interesting husband), the fact that I likely won't come across anything fitting for a while is a boon, to put it mildly.
Taking a chance on a piece of literature just because it's put out by one of those "classic" imprints and was written by a member of one of those underrepresented demographics is always going to be a shot in the dark. What I don't tend to expect from such choosings of mine is a read with context veering headlong into the realm of the tragic, and the history of this piece was upsetting enough that I'm more than a little glad that I'm reviewing it on the weekend, where the remains of my permitted drink with dinner buzz me past the shipwrecks of pathos and allow me to feel in my writing, but not too much. Just as there's more than one way to skin a cat, there's more than one way to hollow out a soul, and I can only hope that someone somewhere is doing something more interesting with Antin's legacy than churning out a trite reprint and assigning it for various university courses as an interested, but extremely dated relic in the conversation about US immigration and the Jewish diaspora. For, like many souls caught in the machinery that educated them just enough for them to mothlike fly into the fire of their own, burning at both ends volition, Antin could have done so much more with her enthusiasm, dedication, and experiences, and in certain places of her memoir, for all her sometimes offensive levels of myopia, I sympathized so much it hurt. So, a lesson in history in many a way. But also a demonstration of the kind of bait-and-switch that continues to this day whenever a cannibal system decides to prop itself up with the latest fad in equitable inclusion, and all I can say is, I hope that future Antins are able to find a community that they truly belong to when the nation state has once again grown bored of their toys.
March 20, 2015
I saw this book and picked it up because it was a Modern Library Classic (I've found a lot of off-the-beaten-track-but-incredibly-fantastic books through them, including Nella Larsen's "Passing" and G. K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday). I love history and actually trace my passion for the past to my high school obsession with American immigrant stories, fueled by the cute actors in my favorite movie at the time, "Newsies."
The book seemed like it would be entertaining because it was written in a conversational style and included reference to so many landmarks in Boston that I love (BPL, Revere Beach, and the Downtown Crossing area, to name a few). I would definitely recommend this to anyone who lives in or is going to visit Boston, because Antin's heart just absolutely soars as she looks upon Boston for the first time.
I was extremely impressed by the quality of the writing, which read so much like poetry. I didn't originally think this was a book I'd need to underline, but I felt as though there wasn't a single chapter that didn't have a quote of immense personal meaning for me. I teach middle school girls and I wish they taught this book because it completely captures the essence of 12 year old girls, who are seeing the whole world open up.
This has, therefore, made its way onto my list of absolute favorite books. Books to be stranded on a desert island with. I'll return to it again and again not just for entertainment but for its depth and wisdom. I felt I had been given an enormous gift by Antin. I'm always going to remember that little girl who sat on the steps of Boston Public Library in 1894 and felt ecstatically happy just to have been given an education and a building full of books.
The book seemed like it would be entertaining because it was written in a conversational style and included reference to so many landmarks in Boston that I love (BPL, Revere Beach, and the Downtown Crossing area, to name a few). I would definitely recommend this to anyone who lives in or is going to visit Boston, because Antin's heart just absolutely soars as she looks upon Boston for the first time.
I was extremely impressed by the quality of the writing, which read so much like poetry. I didn't originally think this was a book I'd need to underline, but I felt as though there wasn't a single chapter that didn't have a quote of immense personal meaning for me. I teach middle school girls and I wish they taught this book because it completely captures the essence of 12 year old girls, who are seeing the whole world open up.
This has, therefore, made its way onto my list of absolute favorite books. Books to be stranded on a desert island with. I'll return to it again and again not just for entertainment but for its depth and wisdom. I felt I had been given an enormous gift by Antin. I'm always going to remember that little girl who sat on the steps of Boston Public Library in 1894 and felt ecstatically happy just to have been given an education and a building full of books.
April 5, 2013
"For there is nothing more tragic in the annals of the Jews"
While Antin writes this in 1912 long before the retrospective reader knows of the holocaust, I cannot help feeling that in 1912 Jews had been through worse things than an exodus to 'The Promised Land'. Antin begins the novel with her upbringing in Polotzk, the Jews are subject to persecution in Russia which is far worse than anything that happens to her in America. She is a vain author and irritating narrator, the thing is an autobiography of a woman who had nothing to remark on. Had I not been obliged to read this for university I would have put it down long ago, but as compulsion made me finish the book, it does get better toward the end and is the only thing that motivated my 2 star rating of Antin's dull memoir.
While Antin writes this in 1912 long before the retrospective reader knows of the holocaust, I cannot help feeling that in 1912 Jews had been through worse things than an exodus to 'The Promised Land'. Antin begins the novel with her upbringing in Polotzk, the Jews are subject to persecution in Russia which is far worse than anything that happens to her in America. She is a vain author and irritating narrator, the thing is an autobiography of a woman who had nothing to remark on. Had I not been obliged to read this for university I would have put it down long ago, but as compulsion made me finish the book, it does get better toward the end and is the only thing that motivated my 2 star rating of Antin's dull memoir.
June 16, 2017
This is a story of the immigration of a smart nervy Jewish girl from Belarus and her transformation into an American. She begins with several chapters of life in a ghetto in Russia and her beginnings into learning and questioning. Her father goes to America and after several years the family joins him. He is not successful and experiences considerable financial stress in the slums of Boston. Nevertheless, he is determined that his daughter will get an education. She makes friends who become equally determined that she will succeed. Public schools and the Public Library become her means of rising out of the slums.
June 9, 2017
This felt like the kind of book that I read, passively enjoyed, and will probably forget in two years or less. Antin was a good writer, with prose that flows well, lovely descriptions, and an unending cheerfulness despite grim circumstances. It was fascinating to learn about Jewish life and persecution, and I was pleased to read an immigration novel that wasn't vastly depressing (looking at you, The Jungle). Despite this, the novel wasn't particularly ground breaking or memorable, but it is a nice historical read.
March 6, 2014
Fascinating insight into the of life an immigrant from the pale of settlement in Russia to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. A poignant perspective of the Jewish-American experience for many at the time, providing perspective on both the meaning of being Jewish and being American.
April 30, 2013
In the autobiography of Mary Antin, The Promised Land, she automatically describes her childhood memories of how she became aware of her situation and of all those living in Belarus. Initially, Antin gives the reader a broad scope of how she sees life in Polotzk and how she slowly begins to realize that she and those living outside of Russia are different from the Russians. One particular aspect of how Antin begins to differentiate between her and those in Russia is how she realizes that she cannot do anything about the awful way she is treated by others. Unlike a newspaper article, through this autobiography Antin shows how she has to cultivate a certain indifference to those who torment her because she is a Jew.
As opposed to a newspaper narrative, Antin’s emotions are clearly represented as she shows how she slowly realizes that the persecution she experiences cannot be prevented. Even the one person, her mother, who should be able to protect her, cannot do anything about it. A newspaper article does not have the capacity to illustrate the full story, from childhood to adulthood, how the person first realizes the gravity of his situation. A newspaper article may be more concerned with the person’s actual departure from the place he is leaving, but it will not go into too much detail how the person came to the consciousness of injustice. That is what the beginning of Mary Antin’s autobiography depicts: the realization of prejudice. Antin realizes that the “world [is] divided into Jews and Gentiles,” however, the “knowledge came so gradually that it could not shock [her]” (Antin 8). When she first has her run in with Vanka, her mother tells her “How can I help you, my poor child? Vanka is a Gentile. The Gentiles do as they like with us Jews” (Antin 8). This piece of information from her mother shows that even the one person who should protect her, cannot. This type of information is not likely to be conveyed in a newspaper where much of the space is dedicated to inform the reader about current events, and how Antin copes with the segregation when she is a child is not exactly a current event.
The autobiography of Mary Antin shows certain emotions and aspects that a newspaper narrative is conventionally not supposed to do. The way Antin processes the information about how she has to accept unfairness can only be related through a narrative. The autobiography allows the reader to go back in time and see how Antin is exposed to the discrimination in Belarus.
As opposed to a newspaper narrative, Antin’s emotions are clearly represented as she shows how she slowly realizes that the persecution she experiences cannot be prevented. Even the one person, her mother, who should be able to protect her, cannot do anything about it. A newspaper article does not have the capacity to illustrate the full story, from childhood to adulthood, how the person first realizes the gravity of his situation. A newspaper article may be more concerned with the person’s actual departure from the place he is leaving, but it will not go into too much detail how the person came to the consciousness of injustice. That is what the beginning of Mary Antin’s autobiography depicts: the realization of prejudice. Antin realizes that the “world [is] divided into Jews and Gentiles,” however, the “knowledge came so gradually that it could not shock [her]” (Antin 8). When she first has her run in with Vanka, her mother tells her “How can I help you, my poor child? Vanka is a Gentile. The Gentiles do as they like with us Jews” (Antin 8). This piece of information from her mother shows that even the one person who should protect her, cannot. This type of information is not likely to be conveyed in a newspaper where much of the space is dedicated to inform the reader about current events, and how Antin copes with the segregation when she is a child is not exactly a current event.
The autobiography of Mary Antin shows certain emotions and aspects that a newspaper narrative is conventionally not supposed to do. The way Antin processes the information about how she has to accept unfairness can only be related through a narrative. The autobiography allows the reader to go back in time and see how Antin is exposed to the discrimination in Belarus.
July 27, 2019
fantastic personal story of a Jewish immigrant woman to the US at the end of the 19th century. Mary Antin was born in what is now Belarus (then part of the Russian empire) and immigrated with her family to the Boston area as a young teen, who loved school and writing and became a famous writer and lecturer. This book gives the story of living in the Russian Pale (the segregation and oppression of Jews in the 19th century), and the contrasts with cosmopolitan New England, and how a young girl faced a new world, and developed her new personal identity as a writer and as an American. Her writing is compelling, a fantastic balance between giving the details of day-to-day life, and insightful self-examination of what is is like to start to create your sense of self as a young adult.
Her writing was eloquent, funny, and insightful about our internal selves. It's clear that this is a woman's perspective on the Immigrant Memoir, as she spends more time on the difficulties of poverty specific to women, especially Antin's mother and sister. And she gives so much credit to the various adults who saw her potential and encouraged her.
There is some awful, casual racism when Antin talks about the African-Americans in her neighborhood, which is disappointing, if not surprising.
But it's especially relevant today, as the central philosophy of the book is that immigrants bring value to the United States and should be given the opportunity to show what they add to our society and culture. As Lafayette would say "Immigrants, we get the job done!"
Love this book, highly recommend it!! So sad that Antin has fallen into obscurity, after being so in demand and famous in her lifetime, and this book was apparently assigned in many schools to teach the immigrant experience for many decades. I wish I'd known of this book much sooner, and think we should bring it back to the high school curriculum!
Her writing was eloquent, funny, and insightful about our internal selves. It's clear that this is a woman's perspective on the Immigrant Memoir, as she spends more time on the difficulties of poverty specific to women, especially Antin's mother and sister. And she gives so much credit to the various adults who saw her potential and encouraged her.
There is some awful, casual racism when Antin talks about the African-Americans in her neighborhood, which is disappointing, if not surprising.
But it's especially relevant today, as the central philosophy of the book is that immigrants bring value to the United States and should be given the opportunity to show what they add to our society and culture. As Lafayette would say "Immigrants, we get the job done!"
Love this book, highly recommend it!! So sad that Antin has fallen into obscurity, after being so in demand and famous in her lifetime, and this book was apparently assigned in many schools to teach the immigrant experience for many decades. I wish I'd known of this book much sooner, and think we should bring it back to the high school curriculum!
October 12, 2012
Most autobiographies are written at the end of the writer’s life. This seems a logical premise but the old adage, quality outweighs quantity isn’t integrated into the hypothesis. One only has to think of the unforgettable diary of an even younger Jewish girl to realize that years alone aren’t the only prerequisite for an excellent narrative. The Promised Land by Mary Antin was written before the author had reached her thirtieth birthday. Mary Antin (1881-1949) was born in a small Russian town and her earliest memories were of harassment and persecution of Jews. The gentile attitudes and consequent discrimination of the Jews paled only slightly by those inflicted fifty years later by Germany’s Third Reich. A Jew’s life under the Tsar was hard and few prospered. This, as other difficulties throughout the world, was one of the main reasons a copious number of immigrants fled to the “Promised Land” of the United States.
Mary Antin was blessed with a quick and rare intellect and a father that recognized and nurtured it. Poverty and hardship plagued this family as it had so many of their fellow immigrants but served to only slow down but not stop her development. Her talent with the written word was discovered at a very early age and the free education in her new country did the rest. This inspiring story of a young girl’s life serves also as a testament to the teachers that helped her along. She had the good fortune to have a number of these and took full advantage of the system offered. This is a story of transition. What else is an autobiography? It is the evolution from young to old; from neophyte to professional. It serves as an inspiration to all and well worth the time to read.
Mary Antin was blessed with a quick and rare intellect and a father that recognized and nurtured it. Poverty and hardship plagued this family as it had so many of their fellow immigrants but served to only slow down but not stop her development. Her talent with the written word was discovered at a very early age and the free education in her new country did the rest. This inspiring story of a young girl’s life serves also as a testament to the teachers that helped her along. She had the good fortune to have a number of these and took full advantage of the system offered. This is a story of transition. What else is an autobiography? It is the evolution from young to old; from neophyte to professional. It serves as an inspiration to all and well worth the time to read.
February 24, 2021
I read The Promised Land for a class on Jewish Literature in Diaspora and I actually really, really enjoyed it! I’m not a Russian Jew, didn’t grow up around many Russian Jews, and never got a very extensive education about Russian Jewry beyond maybe a class or two at Hebrew school, so the beginning part of this book was the most in-depth information I have ever received about it. Mary Antin wrote with extreme detail and emotion about awe tribulations as a Jew growing up in Russia in the times of pogroms and terrible discrimination from Christians - “to worship the cross and to torment a Jew was the same thing”. One thing that I felt was a little offputting was her enamorment with America, which I think is interesting because I've learned (and experienced) that typically Jews try not to assimilate completely (although arguably just by remaining Jewish they are resisting assimilation). However, this did help to highlight how desperate she was fleeing exile into the new Promised Land. Much of the second portion of her book alludes and runs in parallel to Shemot/Exodus in the Torah when the Jews escaped Egypt to return to Israel, the Promised Land.
September 12, 2011
What's to love about Melting Pot literature? Antin adheres strictly to the assimilation of immigrants into American society. She believes with conviction the American experiment, and sets herself up as a type for other immigrants. In that, she is admirable in her diligence to learn a new language, but I feel her memoir does not adequately demonstrate the trials of assimilation. She does not mention the linguistic struggles of learning English. Yet, she does enlighten the reader of cultural differences between the Old and New Worlds; she uses her family as the dividing point.
I feel she is patronizing in her portrayal of her father, mother, and older sister as too Old World to truly become American. She goes so far as resigning her sister to the factory, while she glories in her educational opportunities. While I believe the United States is a good nation, I have trouble with authors who set up this nation as the ideal, which is often at the expense of the oppressed and silenced. Antin, I fear, is one of those authors.
I feel she is patronizing in her portrayal of her father, mother, and older sister as too Old World to truly become American. She goes so far as resigning her sister to the factory, while she glories in her educational opportunities. While I believe the United States is a good nation, I have trouble with authors who set up this nation as the ideal, which is often at the expense of the oppressed and silenced. Antin, I fear, is one of those authors.
July 12, 2021
A lyrical memoir that sings of America
This amazing book, written more than a hundred years ago, captures an immigrants experience, the immigrant experience. Antin expressed the exuberance of innocence, undaunted optimism, intimate moments of self doubt.
She writes of her childhood from the perspective of a young woman, but she captures the emotions and confusion of growing up in a strange land she immediately possesses.
This is not your grandmother's story, but it might be.
This amazing book, written more than a hundred years ago, captures an immigrants experience, the immigrant experience. Antin expressed the exuberance of innocence, undaunted optimism, intimate moments of self doubt.
She writes of her childhood from the perspective of a young woman, but she captures the emotions and confusion of growing up in a strange land she immediately possesses.
This is not your grandmother's story, but it might be.
January 8, 2010
It's a fabulous memoir, first published in 1912. It's an immigrant story, but I loved the way so much of the book is set in Russia and that not only is there the challenge of adjusting to America, but also quite a bit of religious questioning (Antin is Jewish). And it was far more entertaining than I imagined. This book had been languishing on my shelves for years, and I'm slightly kicking myself for not pulling it down sooner. Read it, if this sounds the slightest bit intriguing!
July 25, 2011
This is the second time I've read this book. I decided to read it again because it is approaching the 100 year anniversary of publication. Who doesn't love a story about a poor girl from the ghetto using education to pull herself out? It was also interesting to see what life was like for the orthodox Russian Jew (prior to her coming to the States). I'm amazed at how Antin maintains her upbeat nature throughout some difficulties (like hunger!).
March 5, 2019
It is an interesting first person narrative of a girl who moves from a region of Russia that is now Belarus to Boston. Funny, I always imagined Russian Jews going to New York. It jumps around a bit, and I was left with many questions about all that happened to her after she arrived in the USA. Never the less, I found the early part of the book to be fascinating in its description of the life of Jews in a little settlement in the Pale. It was her experience, and very interesting to me.
September 7, 2009
Not a flawless book, but the history of a Jewish childhood in the Russian Pale of Settlement is extremely interesting, and the author won me over with her sturdy determination to be an American writer. A good immigrant story, especially considering the context of its publication (described in the introduction by Oscar Handlin).
December 15, 2017
This has some worthwhile observations about growing up in a ghetto, subject to hardships and persecution; and the difficulties and joys of assimilating to a new country. It's a valuable perspective by someone who lived through both experiences. On the downside, the prose gets a bit literary at times and I found that it dragged in spots.
July 8, 2019
We read excerpts of this for a course I took in Uni.
I loved the beginning few chapters: Mary Antin's telling of the Jewish community's history/life and difficulties in Europe. I didn't take to her American story as much. It might be her writing style or the fact that I didn't have the whole book, but I appreciated the European chapter more than her American immigration. The history book over the memoir.
These were my favorite parts:
From Chapter 1 Within The Pale
When I was a little girl, the world was divided into two parts; namely, Polotzk, the place where I lived, and a strange land called Russia. (pg. 1)
There came a time when I knew that Polotzk and Vitebsk and Vilna and some other places were grouped together as the "Pale of Settlement," and within this area the Czar commanded me to stay, with my father and mother and friends, and all other people like us. We must not be found outside the Pale, because we were Jews.
...The world was divided into Jews and Gentiles. This knowledge came so gradually that it could not shock me. It trickled into my consciousness drop by drop. By the time I fully understood that I was a prisoner, the shackles had grown familiar to my flesh.
The first time Vanka threw mud at me, I ran home and complained to my mother, who brushed off my dress and said, quite resignedly, "How can I help you, my poor child? Vanka is a Gentile. The Gentiles do as they like with us Jews." The next time Vanka abused me, I did not cry, but ran for shelter, saying to myself, "Vanka is a Gentile." The third time, when Vanka spat on me, I wiped my face and thought nothing at all. I accepted ill-usage from the Gentiles as one accepts the weather. The world was made in a certain way, and I had to live in it. (pg. 5)
*She goes on to describe hiding from the pogroms. And as horrifying as it is is to read (it didn't happen all that long ago...) I've never read about the persecution/disenfranchisement of Russian/Polish Jews, written/described in a memoir before, and I'm happy for it here. It's an important and forgotten part of our history. The pogroms and restrictions on Jewish religious practices and living were precursors to The Holocaust that no one really talks about or acknowledges.*
Outside the Pale he (a Jew) could only go to certain designated localities, on payment of prohibitive fees, augmented by a constant stream of bribes; and even then he lived at the mercy of the local chief of police...
There was a capemaker who had duly qualified, by passing an examination and paying for his trade papers, to live in a certain city. The chief of police suddenly took it into his head to impeach the genuineness of his papers. The capemaker was obliged to travel to St. Petersburg, where he had qualified in the first place, to repeat the examination. He spent the savings of years in petty bribes, trying to hasten the process, but was detained ten months by bureaucratic red tape. When at length he returned to his home town, he found a new chief of police, installed during his absence, who discovered a new flaw in the papers he had just obtained, and expelled him from the city. (pg. 22)
A Jew was a Jew, to be hated and spat upon and used spitefully. (pg. 24)
I loved the beginning few chapters: Mary Antin's telling of the Jewish community's history/life and difficulties in Europe. I didn't take to her American story as much. It might be her writing style or the fact that I didn't have the whole book, but I appreciated the European chapter more than her American immigration. The history book over the memoir.
These were my favorite parts:
From Chapter 1 Within The Pale
When I was a little girl, the world was divided into two parts; namely, Polotzk, the place where I lived, and a strange land called Russia. (pg. 1)
There came a time when I knew that Polotzk and Vitebsk and Vilna and some other places were grouped together as the "Pale of Settlement," and within this area the Czar commanded me to stay, with my father and mother and friends, and all other people like us. We must not be found outside the Pale, because we were Jews.
...The world was divided into Jews and Gentiles. This knowledge came so gradually that it could not shock me. It trickled into my consciousness drop by drop. By the time I fully understood that I was a prisoner, the shackles had grown familiar to my flesh.
The first time Vanka threw mud at me, I ran home and complained to my mother, who brushed off my dress and said, quite resignedly, "How can I help you, my poor child? Vanka is a Gentile. The Gentiles do as they like with us Jews." The next time Vanka abused me, I did not cry, but ran for shelter, saying to myself, "Vanka is a Gentile." The third time, when Vanka spat on me, I wiped my face and thought nothing at all. I accepted ill-usage from the Gentiles as one accepts the weather. The world was made in a certain way, and I had to live in it. (pg. 5)
*She goes on to describe hiding from the pogroms. And as horrifying as it is is to read (it didn't happen all that long ago...) I've never read about the persecution/disenfranchisement of Russian/Polish Jews, written/described in a memoir before, and I'm happy for it here. It's an important and forgotten part of our history. The pogroms and restrictions on Jewish religious practices and living were precursors to The Holocaust that no one really talks about or acknowledges.*
Outside the Pale he (a Jew) could only go to certain designated localities, on payment of prohibitive fees, augmented by a constant stream of bribes; and even then he lived at the mercy of the local chief of police...
There was a capemaker who had duly qualified, by passing an examination and paying for his trade papers, to live in a certain city. The chief of police suddenly took it into his head to impeach the genuineness of his papers. The capemaker was obliged to travel to St. Petersburg, where he had qualified in the first place, to repeat the examination. He spent the savings of years in petty bribes, trying to hasten the process, but was detained ten months by bureaucratic red tape. When at length he returned to his home town, he found a new chief of police, installed during his absence, who discovered a new flaw in the papers he had just obtained, and expelled him from the city. (pg. 22)
A Jew was a Jew, to be hated and spat upon and used spitefully. (pg. 24)
October 31, 2023
I read the introduction and chapter 9 of this for an American Literature and Social Criticism Module at Uni and decided to read the rest of the book. It has some beautifully written moments and some interesting insights but the naivety of the author/persona which is endearing at the beginning gets tiring as the author grows up and still gives an almost jingoistic impression of America. It’s almost painful to see her complete assimilation and the loss of any distinct cultural identity other than American.
February 12, 2024
I hate to leave a low review on this book considering how often Antin expresses her need/hope/belief that she is very talented and worthy of praise. However comma. By the end of this read I still felt like the trajectory of the book was unclear, which made it, for me, a frustrating read. But I must note that Antin writes with beautiful and grandiose images, even if she may be repetitive. I also enjoyed her play with religion, like the naming of the chapters, but I felt that this theme was not tied up by the end. I hope others enjoy this one more than I did!
October 2, 2021
I had to read excerpts of this autobiography for my American Literature course, and to say it was painful to get through would be an understatement. I do think it’s well-written for the most part, but the dullness of events and Mary Antin’s desire to completely assimilate to American culture and blind love for American freedom and opportunity repelled me from this piece.
January 17, 2023
Wrote my Bachelor thesis on this so I naturally loved it!
Mary Antin has a great way of describing stuff, string things together and cause emotion in the reader. The story is super interesting and I was invested throughout the read!
Also, I can really recommend reading W. Sollors intro for a better context understanding.
Mary Antin has a great way of describing stuff, string things together and cause emotion in the reader. The story is super interesting and I was invested throughout the read!
Also, I can really recommend reading W. Sollors intro for a better context understanding.
June 8, 2017
This book is a classic written around 1912. I love to read about history and european immigrant stories. But this is not your typical read. Its tone is harsh. Theres alot of writtings about Russian history. Overall, it put me in a bad mood.
April 18, 2020
The author's writing style was very moving, and she spun her tragic tale into something beautiful. She bridged a gap others had not before and made something of herself. It's not always that I like books I have to read for school, but I liked this one.
August 23, 2022
This was another signed text. Antin details her journey of immigrating to the U.S from Russia & the American ideals she finds herself critiquing and conforming to. In doing so, she experiences emotions of feeling ostracized but comes into her own sense of self.
2/5 ⭐️
2/5 ⭐️
February 23, 2024
I really value the first hand account of life for Jews in Tsarist Russia that this book provides. The account of life for an immigrant family in early 20th century America is more familiar, but still provides interesting insights.
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