Latest Read: The Promised Land

Mary Antin, an immigrant to America from the Jewish Pale in Russia, wrote The Promised Land in 1912.  It is an autobiographical account of life in Russia as well as her years in America.  It is the account of an immigrant, but while she claims to be writing on behalf of the millions of other immigrants to the United States, in reality the bulk of her years in America are mostly her personal accounts of life in the Boston Public Library, the Natural History Club at the Hale Settlement House, and at Boston Latin School.  These mark her experience as exceptional, rather than the norm.

Fearless reader, the book should be read through the lens of an early-20th Century Progressive, bourgeois, liberal perspective.  It falls neatly within this tradition with its focus on uplift through education, specifically classical education.  Antin presents herself as exhibit A in the defense of immigration and specifically in arguing for the possibilities of immigrants to be subsumed and assimilated into a New England intellectual culture.

Antin begins her story at the beginning - that is, gives background on her family and proceeds into her earliest memories.  The most riveting parts of the book are in this section, as she describes life in Russia, and particularly the relationship between Jews and Gentiles and the role of the pogrom.  It is not all that different from the relationship between Blacks and Whites in the American South, the pogrom sounding much like what we would recognize as a lynching.

In any case, her family managed to carve out for itself a prosperous life, complete with servants and fine things and education for Mary, until illness brought the family's fortunes down.  Having spent all of their money on "treatments", the family finds it difficult to regain their economic footing, and so Antin's father emigrates to America and a few years later, tells his family to meet him in Boston.

Mary is able to reestablish her education in America, falls in love with George Washington, and becomes a writer and a proselytizer for a particular version of the American Dream that is born in this era: the immigrant version of prosperity.  The Promised Land is an interesting account, and certainly its implied arguments for the role of the immigrant in American life, as well as the glory and possibilities of public education are well-taken.  However, it is hard to see the account as particularly emblematic or typical of the immigrant experience.