Anzia Yezierska's Money Makes Tha World Go Round

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Eric Shorts Professor Paquita Garatea History of Women in America December 3, 2012 “Money Makes Tha World Go Round” Anzia Yezierska (1881 - 1970) was the daughter of Russian-Polish Jews who immigrated to the United States in the early 1890s. Her father was a Talmudic scholar who engaged in full time study of the holy books while her mother struggled to support the family. Yerzierska worked in sweat shops to put herself through Columbia University. After achieving her goal of becoming an independent woman, her sister influenced her to begin writing. Yezierska became a popular novelist and short story writer during the 1920s before slipping into relative…show more content…
However, her college experience is where she first interacts solely with the predominantly American culture. In order to pay for school and get good grades, Sara must ignore everything else, including her family, to work and study. Slowly and painfully, Sara learns to talk, dress and act like her American peers. She leaves college with her teaching degree and a thousand dollars, which she won in an essay contest. Feeling successful, Sara returns home to find her mother fatally ill. After her mother's death, her father remarries only to find his new wife, Mrs. Feinstein, is a gold-digger after his late wife's lodge money. Sara and her sisters, still angry over their father's treatment of them, become enraged at his quick marriage after their mother's death and refuse to help him when his new wife spends all his money and refuses to work. Sara goes back to New York and finds a teaching job. Mrs. Feinstein is not satisfied with Reb's money and wants more from his daughters. She is angry that Sara is avoiding her father, so she writes a nasty letter to the principal of the school where Sara is teaching, Hugo Seelig, in an effort to give her a bad reputation. Instead, the principal sympathizes with Sara and feels Mrs. Feinstein is desperate and pathetic. Sara is relieved and eventually she and Hugo, who is also a Polish-American, start dating. Sara feels she has left her old life completely behind

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