Anzia Yezierska Thesis

Reaching for the land of promises and opportunity, to fall nothing short of the American Dream, Anzia Yezierska arrived in the United States, “...America was a land of living hope, woven of dreams, aflame with longing and desire” (Yezierska 704). Hope was the driving force behind Anzia's decision to leave her home country of Russia to venture into the unknown, but seemingly better world—The United States of America. Leaving everything in Russia, Anzia began her journey to the Promised Land (Yezierska 705) with nothing but a few dollars and an American Dream in her pocket. Within days of her arrival, the bitter reality of Anzia's dreams hit her devastatingly hard, “...my America...I was like a thing following blindly after something far off in the dark” (Yezierska 708).

was only a small portion of attaining the American Dream as an immigrant. Anzia, being her native language was Russian, needed to learn English in order to achieve her dreams or else she only had two other options, “Only one of two chances was left open to me: the kitchen or minding babies” (Yezierska 705). Throughout Anzia's early time in the U.S., she discovered the reality of her dreams, the impossibility of them all. “I saw always in my heart the vision of Utopian America...but now I felt that America of my dreams never was and never could be” (Yezierska 711). The country Anzia yearned for, she learned, was a fragrant of her imagination she desperately wanted to conquer—but never