Salome of the Tenements

Anzia Yezierska

University of Illinois Press, 1995 - Fiction - 184 pages

Salome of the Tenements shocked many critics and writers when first published in 1923, but its author was immediately hailed as a major new talent. A love story of a working-class Salome and her highborn John the Baptist, the novel is based on the real-life story of Jewish immigrant Rose Pastor's fairytale romance with the millionaire socialist Graham Stokes. It also reflects Yezierska's own aborted romance with the famous educator John Dewey. Yezierska's passionate but cynical novel poses oppositions such as cultural type/stereotype, passion/reason, and ethnic identity/assimilation, and it resonates powerfully to the contemporary reader.

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LibraryThing Review

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 ...

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
• Honest Abe: 59
• Passion and Roses: 65
• Manning Himself: 73
• Lipkin the Dreamer: 78
• The Temple of Serenity: 82
• 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
• The Feel of the Beautiful: 164
• Understanding: 174
• Revelation: 179

Bibliographic information

• Title: Salome of the Tenements; Radical novel reconsidered
• Author: Anzia Yezierska
• Contributor: Gay Wilentz
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1995
• ISBN: 0252064356, 9780252064357
• Length: 184 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology