How do Bread givers illustrate the conflict that many immigrants to the U.S. have faced between their Old World culture and the new culture they encountered in America?

How do Bread givers illustrate the conflict that many immigrants to the U.S. have faced between their Old World culture and the new culture they encountered in America?

Introduction

Bread Givers, is perhaps the most famous book which describes, in detail, life of Jewish immigrants in America around 1920 and the development of their community. This book helps to understand the culture, religion, beliefs, the Jewish immigrants' relations with other immigrants and Americans, their family structure, their way of life in the city. It also talks about the poverty and despair of immigrants to America (Foner, 2011). The story and events of Bread Givers gives a clear understanding of the lives of new, Jewish immigrant families and their quest to achieving success in an unfamiliar and un-accepting new country. This paper identifies the various conflicts that immigrants have faced in the United States of America.

Discussion

Old Cultures and the New cultures

The novel Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska is a touching story about the lives of the Smolinsky family and their beliefs into life in America. With a father who is totally attached to his religious devotion, the four Smolinsky daughters are put to work to support their family, and are burdened with the tasks of finding husbands or just being married off without choice (Foner, 2011). Many issues such as those involving the differences of gender and lives in the public and domestic spheres are touched upon in the Reb Smolinsky family's quest to gain a livelihood, just as many other Eastern European families did in coming to America in the early 20th century. Life was difficult for the entire Reb Smolinsky family; where the father was so deeply rooted in his Judaism, and the daughters, while supporting their family by working, all had different ambitions for the futures of their own lives (Foner, 2011).

Reb Smolisnky blindness, fueled by his unspoken desire not recognize the need to adapt to new ways of life, reaches such an extreme that is always served the best food rations, as if no deprivation would affect the whole family and was not forced as a parent, to serve above all to sustain their own (Foner, 2011). Bessie, the eldest daughter, meets a young man who is willing to marry her without demanding any compensation in return, but the rabbi does not discover any benefit at this link, because the girl has been assumed to earn until the largest financial family burdens has been over. He then arranges marriages for all three girls, which leave them all badly unhappy (Foner, 2011). Sara is angry with her father for what he's done to her sisters, but her age and gender leave her incapable to fight with his father for her rights. Reb Smolinsky takes all of the money he got from Bessie's marriage and sinks it into a grocery store that the previous ...