Like many Jewish women in the shtetls -- or Jewish villages of Eastern Europe -- Anzia Yezierska looked forward to a life of sacrifice for her husband and children. Education and career were for boys only, she thought. But something happened to Yezierska and thousands of other immigrant women on their way to a new world. They realized America could be the land of freedom and equality for women as well as for men. Yezierska became a writer, turning out some of the best stories we have about life on New York's Lower East Side. In her novel BREAD GIVERS, she writes of a girl breaking from tradition. "More and more I began to think inside myself, I don't want to sell [fish] for the rest of my days. I want to learn something. I want to do something. I want some day to make myself for a person and come among people." Yezierska accomplished a lot: she published six bestsellers between 1920 and 1932, becoming famous and wealthy in the process!
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