Anzia Yezierska (1880?-1970) is the author of many books, including the novels Bread Givers (1925), Hungry Hearts
(1920), and Salome of the Tenements (1923).
Review
"While Yezierska's writing stands in sharp contrast to the quantity of fiction by middle- and upper-class
white women writers so prevalent in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, what is particularly interesting
about Arrogant Beggar is that it focuses more directly on class than do most of her novels. Katherine Stubbs's
introduction is comprehensive, helpful, beautifully written, and convincing--a model of scholarship and insight."
--Linda Wagner-Martin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Duke University Press Web Site, March, 2000
Summary
The target of intense critical comment when it was first published in 1927, Arrogant Beggar's scathing attack
on charity-run boardinghouses remains one of Anzia Yezierska's most devastating works of social criticism. The
novel follows the fortunes of its young Jewish narrator, Adele Lindner, as she leaves the impoverished conditions
of New York's Lower East Side and tries to rise in the world. Portraying Adele's experiences at the Hellman Home
for Working Girls, the first half of the novel exposes the sickening farce of institutionalized charity while portraying
the class tensions that divided affluent German American Jews from more recently arrived Russian American Jews.
The second half of the novel takes Adele back to her ghetto origins as she explores an alternative model of philanthropy
by opening a restaurant that combines the communitarian ideals of Old World shtetl tradition with the contingencies
of New World capitalism. Within the context of this radical message, Yezierska revisits the themes that have made
her work famous, confronting complex questions of ethnic identity, assimilation, and female self-realization.
Katherine Stubbs's introduction provides a comprehensive and compelling historical, social, and literary context
for this extraordinary novel and discusses the critical reaction to its publication in light of Yezierska's biography
and the once much-publicized and mythologized version of her life story. Unavailable for over sixty years, Arrogant
Beggar will be enjoyed by general readers of fiction and be of crucial importance for feminist critics, students
of ethnic literature. It will also prove an exciting and richly rewarding text for students and scholars of Jewish
studies, immigrant literature, women's writing, American history, and working-class fiction.
