Hungry Hearts

Yezierska, Anzia, 1880？-1970Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.8

Word count: 294K words
Chapters: 30

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Hungry Hearts by Anzia YezierskaAuthor: Yezierska, Anzia, 1880?-1970,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 30, 2012

Editor's review

Hungry Hearts is a representative short story collection by Anzia Yezierska, set in the Jewish immigrant community of New York and depicting lower-class women's struggles and longings amid poverty, labor, and the pressures of assimilation. The author herself experienced immigration and factory work, and her writing carries a strong autobiographical imprint and colloquial rhythm, with fervent emotion and a gift for rendering the craving for dignity and knowledge within the texture of everyday life. The work offers a vivid record of the American immigrant experience in the early twentieth century and presents the complex process of women's emerging self-awareness. Readers will feel both the weight of the characters' circumstances and their unextinguished desire to rise. The book is short and direct in language, making it a suitable introduction to American immigrant literature and the Jewish American writing tradition, and it can also be used in literature classrooms to discuss class, gender, and identity.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in American immigrant literature and the Jewish American writing tradition
Students studying early twentieth-century women's labor and assimilation experiences
Readers who enjoy short stories and prefer intense emotion and colloquial narration
Teachers and self-learners seeking supplementary materials for literature courses

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer long, continuous plots and complex novel structures
Readers seeking systematic immigration history data and macro-level analysis

Reading tips

Read the title story first to grasp the author's colloquial rhythm and emotional tone, then read the remaining pieces.
As you read, note the different choices female characters make regarding work, education, and marriage, and keep a brief character comparison.
Read alongside an overview of American immigration history or Jewish American literature to better understand the background.
Pause after each story and record recurring images and emotional keywords.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for readers whose first language is not English?

The original is in English, the narrative is mainly in short stories, and the sentences tend to be colloquial, so the overall threshold is not high. But some dialogue carries immigrant accents and expressions influenced by Yiddish, which non-native readers may need notes or a dictionary to understand. It is advisable to try one story first before deciding whether to read the whole book.

Is this a novel or a short-story collection?

It is a short-story collection. The stories are relatively independent and revolve around the immigrant community and women's circumstances. You can read them in order or pick the ones that interest you first, without affecting comprehension.

What should I watch out for when reading an electronic edition?

This book comes from a public-domain e-book platform, and typesetting and proofreading quality may vary by edition. Use a reader with adjustable fonts, and when you encounter unusual line breaks or spelling differences, judge by context and, if necessary, compare with other public-domain editions.

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About the author

Yezierska, Anzia, 1880？-1970 Author · Polish-born American

Yezierska, Anzia, 1880?-1970, was a Polish-born American writer. Public information about her is limited, and details of her life are disputed, with neither her birth year nor her early years reliably documented. She is known for depicting the poverty and struggles of Jewish immigrant women in America. Her characters are mostly working-class women caught between wealth and want and between conflicting cultures; her prose is direct and emotionally intense, with an autobiographical quality. Her representative work, Hungry Hearts, presents in short-story form the hardships of immigrant life and the longing for food, dignity, and a decent living, bringing a frequently overlooked group into the view of American readers. One of her works is held in this collection. Overall, her writing focuses on immigrant experience and women's circumstances, in a plain yet powerful style, and holds a place in American immigrant literature.