America and I

“As one of the dumb, voiceless ones I speak. One of the millions of immigrants beating, beating out their hearts at your gates for a breath of understanding.”

Yezierska’s melodramatic style is apparent within the first sentences of her essay, where she also focuses immediately on one of her themes: the story of immigrants, which is a struggle often unrecognized by Americans. Immigrants, she implies in these short phrases, have much to offer in return for a little bit of understanding from those who have already “made it” in the US. Their voices remain unheard because they are not part of mainstream America and their ability to assimilate is hampered by invisible barriers, but they desperately wish to be included in the new world they’ve adopted. 

“Choked for ages in the airless oppression of Russia, the Promised Land rose up—wings for my stifled spirit—sunlight burning through my darkness—freedom singing to be in my prison—deathless songs tuning prison-bards into strings of a beautiful violin.” 

An example of the emotional language, heavy on metaphor, that Yezierska uses in her essay, this quote evokes the freedom that the young woman experiences in the New World—freedom from religious persecution but also perhaps freedom from the more authoritarian views that traditional Jewish culture has placed on the livelihoods of women. The author expresses a high-flying and dramatic hope here, invoking the conflicts of light against dark, music versus silence, and the freedom and promise of American life against the oppressive existence of past lives in other places.