Salome of the Tenements

Anzia Yezierska

University of Illinois Press, 1995 - American fiction - 184 pages

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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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

About the author

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Salome of the Tenements; Radical novel reconsidered
• Author: Anzia Yezierska
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1995
• ISBN: 0252064356, 9780252064357
• Length: 184 pages