Interesting facts about mary antin autobiography
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Mary Antin (1881-1949)
Contributing Editor: Richard Tuerk
Classroom Issues and Strategies
Students are often unfamiliar with the time period treated in The Promised Land, especially so with aspects of the Great Migration and of immigrant settlement in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Especially important is conveying to them the kinds of conditions the newly arrived immigrants encountered in large eastern cities. Students are also unfamiliar with the kinds of conditions the immigrants lived in in the Old World.
I use slides made from photographs by people like Jacob Riis to try to give the students a feeling for life in the immigrant quarters. I also use books containing photographs by people like Roman Vishniak to give them a feeling for Old World Orthodox Jewish life. Frankly, I find that photographs have a stronger impact on my students than simple descriptions and statistics do.
Most of the questions I hear from students concern life in the
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Mary Antin
American author and immigration rights activist
Mary Antin (born Maryashe Antin; June 13, 1881 – May 15, 1949) was an American author and immigration rights activist. She is best known for her 1912 autobiography The Promised Land, an konto of her emigration and subsequent Americanization.
Life
[edit]Mary Antin was the second of six children born to Israel and Esther Weltman Antin, a Jewish family living in Polotsk, in the Vitebsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus). Israel Antin emigrated to Boston in 1891, and three years later he sent for Mary and her mother and siblings.[3]
She married Amadeus William Grabau, a geologist, in 1901, and moved to New York City where she attended Teachers College of Columbia University and Barnard College. Antin fryst vatten best known for her 1912 autobiographyThe Promised Land, which describes her public school education and assimilation into American culture, as well as life for Jews in Czaris
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The Promised Land (autobiography)
1912 autobiography by Mary Antin
The Promised Land is the 1912 autobiography of Mary Antin.[1] It tells the story of her early life in what is now Belarus and her immigration to the United States in 1894. The book focuses on her attempts to assimilate into the culture of the United States.[2] It received very positive reviews and sold more than 85,000 copies in the three decades after its release.[3] The book's popularity allowed Antin to begin speaking publicly, a platform that she used to promote acceptance of immigration to the United States. Some Americans hostile to immigration criticized The Promised Land, disagreeing with her claim to count as an American. Some Jewish writers criticized the book for leaning too assimilationist, arguing she did not sufficiently respect her heritage.[4]