Essay: Attitudes Toward Assimilation in 20th Century Jewish-American Literature
Throughout the twentieth century, the assimilation of Jews in America underwent a transformation. Mary Antin's The Promised Land , written in 1912, shows a young immigrant's desperate struggle to learn English and prove herself worthy of the country, its people, and its language, while repressing every relic of the Old World, its language, and its customs. Lamed Shapiro's New Yorkish shows the beginning of a shift of power relations between non-Jewish American society, but to another, equally unhealthy extreme: the story's protagonist has powerful conflicting feelings toward gentiles, betraying the gap that still exists between Jews and non-Jews. Finally, Grace Paley's The Loudest Voice relates the experiences of a second-generation Jewish American child, in a loving mockery of both gentile and Jewish America that shows that self-aware assimilation in America is entirely possible; the intense emotions and conflicts that surrounded Jew-Gentile interactions are gon