Salome of the Tenements

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University of Illinois Press, 1995 - American fiction - 184 pages
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The story of a young, aspiring Jewish woman from the ghetto who will do anything to get her man in this case an upper-class WASP. When she discovers he is not really what she wanted, she will do anything to get away. Based on the real-life story of the Jewish immigrant activist Rose Pastor's fairytale romance with the millionaire socialist Graham Stokes, the novel also reflects Yezierska's own doomed romance with the famous educator John Dewey. Passionate and engagingly sardonic, it criticizes the concept of the American "Melting Pot" in the language of the Lower East Side and exposes the hypocrisy of the "good works" of the privileged class and their so-called dedication to the poor. Gay Wilentz's introduction discusses Anzia Yezierska's life and work.
Originally published in 1923.
 

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User Review  - PatsyMurray - LibraryThing

I was deeply disappointed in this book. It certainly is unusual. A transliteration from Yiddish into English, the language takes a little getting used to, but what was even more difficult for me was ... Read full review

Selected pages

Contents

Salome Meets Her Saint
1
Shopping for Simplicity
12
Jaky Solomon and Jacques Hollins
17
The Inner Temple of Fashion
21
The Democracy of Beauty
26
Manning Touches the Pulse of the People
32
Sonya Stoops to Conquer
41
The Lily Out of an AshCan
56
Love in Chaos
89
GreenwoldGods Own Eden
103
The Days After
109
The East Side Shakes Hands with Society
117
The Crumbling Temple
132
Only Paying Up
140
The Chasm
143
Tor the Truth They Burn You
154

Honest Abe
59
Passion and Roses
65
Manning Himself
73
Lipkin the Dreamer
78
The Temple of Serenity
82
The Feel of the Beautiful
164
Understanding
174
Revelation
179
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About the author (1995)

Anzia Yezierska was a sweatshop worker and laundress before becoming a successful novelist. Two of her seven works of fiction, including Salome of the Tenements, were made into motion pictures. Gay Wilentz, an associate professor of English at East Carolina University, is the author of Binding Cultures: Black Women Writers in Africa and the Diaspora.

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