Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-g4j75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-15T11:10:16.998Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

23 - Jewish American women writers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

By
Hana Wirth-Nesher
Edited by
Dale M. Bauer
Hana Wirth-Nesher
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
Dale M. Bauer
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Get access

Summary

The most well-known work of Jewish American literature can be found on the Statue of Liberty. Written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 and affixed to the pedestal in 1903, “The New Colossus” puts these words in the mouth of America's most famous icon as she welcomes newcomers at her gates. “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” (Selected Poems, 58). The denial of human rights and the physical violence to which Jews were subjected in Russia as reported in the international press moved Lazarus to write this poem, and to lend her efforts to the cause of the refugees who began to stream into the United States. Within days of composing these stirring words, Lazarus wrote another poem entitled “1492” where she brings together her pride in being both American and Jew. Her dual identity is encapsulated in the fateful date itself, 1492, that she addresses as “Thou two-faced year,” and that she imagines as weeping “when Spain cast forth with flaming sword, / The children of the prophets of the Lord” (87).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of American Women's Literature , pp. 458 - 476
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912.Google Scholar
Antler, Joyce, ed. America and I: Short Stories by American Jewish Women Writers. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. “Reflections on Little Rock.” Dissent 6.1 (Winter 1959):.Google Scholar
Avery, Evelyn. Modern Jewish Women Writers in America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broner, E. M.Mornings and Mourning: A Kaddish Journal. San Francisco: Harper, 1994.Google Scholar
Budick, Emily. “Rebecca Goldstein: Jewish Visionary in Skirts.” The Hollins Critic 34.2 (1997):.Google Scholar
Chametzky, Jules, ed. Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.Google Scholar
Dropkin, Celia. “A Dancer.” 1959. In Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers. Ed. Forman, Frieda et al. Toronto: Second Story Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Falk, Marcia. The Book of Blessing: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival. San Francisco: Harper, 1996.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Rebecca. The Mind/Body Problem. New York: Penguin, 1983.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Rebecca. Mazel. New York: Viking, 1995.Google Scholar
Goodman, Allegra. Paradise Park. New York: Dial, 2001.Google Scholar
Goodman, Allegra. Kaaterskill Falls. New York: Dial, 1998.Google Scholar
Goodman, Allegra. The Family Markowitz. New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1996.Google Scholar
Gubar, Susan. “Jewish American Women Writers and the Race Question.” In The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature. Ed. Wirth-Nesher, Hana and Kramer, Michael. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Horn, Dara. The World to Come. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.Google Scholar
Hurst, Fannie. Imitation of Life. New York: Harper, 1933.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Shirley. “Reasons.” In Roots in the Air. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Shirley. “Sanctum.” In Threshold. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Klein, Gerda Weissman. All But My Life. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957.Google Scholar
Krauss, Nicole. The History of Love. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.Google Scholar
Lagnado, Lucette. The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. New York: Harper Collins, 2007.Google Scholar
Lazarus, Emma. Selected Poems. Ed. Hollander, John. New York: The Library of America, 2005.Google Scholar
Leitner, Isabella. Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz. New York: Dell, 1978.Google Scholar
Margolin, Anna. Poems. Introduction by Avraham Novershtern. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Marom, Daniel. “Who is the ‘Mother of Exiles’? Jewish Aspects of Emma Lazarus's ‘The New Colossus’.” Prooftexts 20 (2000):.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matza, Diane, ed. Sephardic-American Voices: Two Hundred Years of a Literary Legacy. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1997.Google Scholar
Molodowsky, Kadya. “God of Mercy.” Trans. Irving Howe. In The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse. Ed. Howe, Irving, Wisse, Ruth R., and Shmeruk, Khone. New York: Viking, 1987.Google Scholar
Molodowsky, Kadya. Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky. Trans. and ed. Hellerstein, Kathryn. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Norich, Anita. “Yiddish Literature.” In Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Ed. Hyman, Paula and Dash Moore, Deborah. New York: Routledge, 1998.Google Scholar
Obejas, Achy. Days of Awe. New York: Ballantine, 2001.Google Scholar
Olsen, Tillie. Tell Me a Riddle. New York: Random House, 1990.Google Scholar
Osherow, Jacqueline.Conversations with Survivors. Athens, GA, and London: University of Georgia Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Osherow, Jacqueline.Dead Men's Praise. New York: Grove, 1999.Google Scholar
Ozick, Cynthia. “America: Toward Yavneh.” In What is Jewish Literature? Ed. Wirth-Nesher, Hana. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994.Google Scholar
Ozick, Cynthia. The Puttermesser Papers: A Novel. New York: Knopf, 1997.Google Scholar
Ozick, Cynthia. The Shawl. New York: Random House, 1990.Google Scholar
Paley, Grace. The Collected Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1994.Google Scholar
Piercy, Marge. The Art of Blessing the Day. New York: Knopf, 1999.Google Scholar
Schor, Esther. Emma Lazarus. New York: Schocken, 2006.Google Scholar
Segal, Lore. Her First American. New York: The New Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Ann, ed. Jewish American Women: A Bio-Bibliographical and Critical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Shreiber, Maeera. Singing in a Strange Land: A Jewish American Poetics. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1973.Google Scholar
Vapnyar, Lara. There are Jews in My House. New York: Pantheon, 2003.Google Scholar
Wasserstein, Wendy. The Heidi Chronicles and Other Plays. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990.Google Scholar
Wolosky, Shira, “An American-Jewish Typology: Emma Lazarus and the Figure of Christ.” Prooftexts 16 (1996):.Google Scholar
Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. New York: Persea, 1925.Google Scholar
Yezierska, Anzia. Salome of the Tenements. 1923. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×