Book: Paperback | 5.07 x 7.79in | 368 pages | ISBN 9780140189858 | 01 Feb 1997 | Penguin Classic | 18 - AND UP
"I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to write my life story?"
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."
The Promised Land - Mary Antin
Introduction and Notes by Werner Sollors
Illustrations
Introduction
Suggestions for Further Reading
A Note on the Text
Editor's Acknowledgments
The Promised Land
Introduction
I. Within the Pale
II. Children of the Law
III. Both Their Houses
IV. Daily Bread
V. I Remember
VI. The Tree of Knowledge
VII. The Boundaries Stretch
VIII. The Exodus
IX. The Promised Land
X. Initiation
XI. "My Country"
XII. Miracles
XIII. A Child's Paradise
XIV. Manna
XV. Tarnished Laurels
XVI. Dover Street
XVII. The Landlady
XVIII. The Burning Bush
XIX. A Kingdom in the Slums
XX. The Heritage
