How I Found America
Anzia Yezierska

Introduction by Vivian Gornick

In evoking the joy and pain of the Jewish immigrant experience, Anzia Yezierska has no peer. Her stories and novels, written from the 1920s to the 1960s, immortalized the Jews of New York’s Lower East Side and their struggle to escape poverty and to partake of America’s promise.  

How I Found America gather together all of Yezierska’s short fiction: the two collections published during her lifetime—Hungry Hearts and Children of Loneliness—and seven additional tales. Each story is authentic and immediate, as memorable as family history passed from one generation to the next. Taken together, they constitute an enduring portrait of a time and a people.  

“All the stories in How I Found America are rich with a primitive energy that rises with volcanic force.”
—Los Angeles Times

Anzia Yezierska was born around 1880 in Russian Poland and immigrated to New York City in the 1890s. In addition to her stories, she is the author of many novels, including the classic Bread Givers and The Open Cage, and a memoir, Red Ribbon on a White Horse. She died in 1970. 

Paperback / $11.95 (Can $17.99) / ISBN 978-0-89255-298-6 / 314 pages / Fiction