author
Anzia Yezierska
d. 1970
Best known for vivid stories of Jewish immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side, this fiercely original writer turned poverty, ambition, and family conflict into unforgettable fiction. Her work, including Bread Givers, speaks with urgency, wit, and hard-won hope.
2 Audiobooks
Hungry Hearts
by Anzia Yezierska
Children of loneliness
by Anzia Yezierska
About the author
Born in Poland under the Russian Empire and brought to the United States as a child, Anzia Yezierska grew up in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The world of crowded tenements, factory work, and immigrant striving became the living material of her fiction.
She became known in the 1920s for stories and novels about Jewish immigrant women trying to claim education, independence, and a voice of their own. Her best-known books include Hungry Hearts, Salome of the Tenements, and Bread Givers, works remembered for their emotional force and their close attention to the pressures of family, poverty, and assimilation.
Although her reputation faded for a time, later readers and scholars brought renewed attention to her writing. Today she is often valued as an important chronicler of immigrant experience and as a powerful voice in American literature.