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Recollecting, Repeating, and Walking Through: Immigration, Trauma, and Space in Mary Antin's The Promised Land
Ist Teil von
Melus, 2010-03, Vol.35 (1), p.141-166
Ort / Verlag
USA: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
Erscheinungsjahr
2010
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Oxford Journals 2020 Humanities
Beschreibungen/Notizen
While critics have usually focused on "The Promised Land's" rosy-hued vision of America as a paradigmatic example of the assimilation narrative, this essay shows the significance of the incommensurable, and hence traumatic, break created by immigration and Antin's attempt to create psychological coherence out of that trauma through the related practices of autobiographical narrative and spatial orientation. Cahan's "The Rise of David Levinsky" (1917), Yezierska's "Bread Givers" (1925), Michael Gold's "Jews Without Money" (1930), and Henry Roth's "Call It Sleep" (1934) all follow Jewish immigrant children or adolescents obtaining their educations on American streets and in schools. Perhaps Grabau's identification with Germany provoked painful memories of her experiences there, resulting in yet another replaying of the traumatic event. In any event, if "The Promised Land" marked Antin's arrival into the American literary-cultural scene, it also marked the limit of her influence.