The tenement saga: the Lower East Side and early Jewish American writers

Abstract

Nearly two million men, women, and children emigrated from Eastern Europe between 1882 and 1924 and settled in, or passed through, the Lower East Side of New York City. Sanford Sternlicht tells of his own childhood in this vibrant neighborhood and puts it within the context of fourteen early twentieth-century East Side writers who defined this new Jewish homeland and paved the way for the later great American novelists. Sternlicht discusses the role of women, the Yiddish Theater, secular values, the struggle between generations, street crime, labor unions, and the importance of newspapers and periodicals. He documents the decline of Yiddish culture as these immigrants blended into The Golden Land.