ESSAY CEMETERY

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...

1 A man with a grouchy look sits slumped and orders griddle cakes. The waitress who takes his order and isn't very pretty tries hard to get him to smile back and finally softens him a little. He eats his griddle cakes thoughtfully and before he leaves asks the waitress without hope when she gets off work. 2 He walks in the streets around the library, meets a woman he knows and declines accompanying her because he has a meeting soon. She is erect and he hunched but slightly cheered. He walks to the Automat. The waitress is waiting, wearing clothes that do not suit her. She has a "volatile" face that often changes expression. He asks her name – Jennie – and guesses that her family hails from Spain. She answers, hurt, that she is American-born from California. Her speech is incorrect and "New Yorkish". 3 He buys her an ice cream, and suggests that Jennie is too common a name and calls her Dolores. She asks his name and he says she won't be able t...

Lamed Shapiro. Image source Themes Appearance and ethnicity ·        Hypocrisy – he wants her name to be ethnic and his not. ·        Fragmentation and globalization ·        Concentrating on the outside ·        Mean and condescending ·        Epistemology and the individual ·        Insists on making her into a whore Style and devices Fragmented Frequently recurring words Movie Theater Griddle cakes Volatile Rose People and places The Automat Public library Jennie New York California Spain LUNCHROOM, POPULAR PRICES Bronx 5 th avenue 59 th street 10 th avenue