Bread Givers: A Novel (1925)

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This book was recommended in a class on Immgration. Fascinating story about a Polish Jewish family on the Lower East Side of NYC in the 1920's and the challenge one of the daughters had to get out from under the thumb of her Talmud reading father. Just as interesting is the foreward by Alice Kellser-Harris who found the original book in NYPL and had the book republished. ( )

Bread Givers is the story of a ten year old girl named Sara Smolinsky who lives with her Jewish immigrant family in New York. Her mother fusses over her girls and plays favorites while her father obsesses over the Torah and his cultural roots all day long. Poor and starving, Sara's father refuses to get a job insisting that studying scripture is the most important thing in life. Sara ventures out and finds ways to make money in the busy streets of New York. Her parents eventually come into some money and buy their own grocery store which ends up being a sham. All the stores goods were fake or filled with sawdust and the family falls back to square one. After arguing with her father, Sara ends up running away and attending school. She works her way up the social and economic ladder and deals with many issues associated with her Jewish ancestry. After obtaining a job as a school teacher, she meets a man who works in the school and begins dating him. She finally decides to visit her family and discovers that her mother is on her death bed. Her mother passes away and her father soon marries another woman who is intent on bleeding him dry of his money. In the end, Sara talks with her father while he is fatally ill and discovers that family—no matter how bad they were/are to you—is a root of who you are and where you come from.

Summary
This book is about an immigrant family. The story is told and focuses on a young girl name sara and her life. She has two sisters whom all three are verbally and physically abused by their father whom they just wish to be accepted by. They live in American and all have dreams of marrying, and going on to better themselves and make better lives for themselves. the sisters Slowly give up on their dreams and fall into the same path as the mother and father. Sara will not give up on her dreams though, she continues to push and she goes to college. In the end despite all the hardships and obstacles she reaches her goals and reaches.

Personal Reaction
I read this book for a past history class and was quite reluctant to pick it up. thinking it was going to be so historical and drag on. yet when i started reading the book i couldnt put it down. The struggle and the relatability to some of our everyday life situations makes you really be able to relate to it and keeps you interested.

Classroom Extension
1. This book could be used in a high school or maybe junior high class when you are in a unit talking about the holocaust and hitler.
2. this book could also be used when the classroom is learning about immigration ( )

This book was read for my Introduction to Literature class.

When I first started to read the book I found myself really annoyed with the sentence syntax and how it was almost absolutely impossible for me to really understand what was happening without reading every sentence at least three times. Yet because I needed to read this book for my class I could not put it off without my grade suffering. So I tried to not let it bug me and within a few chapters I finally succeeded.

The story is a very character driven one or at least that is what my Literature professor said. I am forced to believe this because many of the characters I found that I loved or hated. I don't really think that I liked any of the characters even after the author tries to redeem them. The only character that I came anywhere near liking was Mashah and the reason that I liked her was because she was the only one who did not let her father or family walk all over her. Most of the people in my class found Bessie the most likable character but I could not stand her inability to stand up or think for herself.

The main character in the story is Sara. She is not really featured too much in the beginning and I felt like she was more of a narrator in the beginning. I did not really have much sense of who she was until her sister's start to leave the home. After that I realized how much she was alike to her father and I could not like her. She allows the tiniest things to dictate her emotions and she did the more irrational things every time she thought that she was in love.

I did not really have much sense of time moving through the story. While Sarah started out at ten I could not tell the difference between then and the end of the book. Also I could not tell anytime passed at all while she was in college.

I liked the idea of the story but the execution was a little off for me. Most of the characters actions was like reading a telenovela. They were all over acted and too dramatic. They continually pull out their hair and at one point a character was said to be slamming her head against the wall. Then there was the fact that the main character let herself be emotionally manipulated by every character around her. I am just not a very forgiving person when it comes to characters that let people walk all over them. Lets just say that my eyes got a huge workout with how often that I rolled my them at the characters and their actions. ( )