Anzia Yezierskas Bread Givers Soap And Water
In Anzia Yezierska’s works Bread Givers and “Soap and Water”, she uses similar aspects of the characters that portray her own life. Both of the stories resemble similarities of Yezierskas life and appear to be autobiographical to her personal experiences. ... Sarah in Bread Givers and the narrator in "Soap and Water" each have a hunger that drive them in different directions: actual hunger for food, progress into society and a hunger for knowledge. ... Like the Characters in Yezierskas stories Bread Givers and "Soap and Water", Yezierska had the same goals and accomplishments and came from a similar background: going to college, becoming a teacher, working in the laundry business and being raised in poverty. Although the stories resemble Yezierskas life, they are not, according to her daughter, completely accountable. According to Henriksens "A Writers Life", he claims Yezierskas daughter warns against the accuracy of her mothers writing. ... Bread Givers and “Soap and Water” display a perspective that the majority culture is clean and that the minority culture is “dirty”. ... Similar to the two characters, Anzia Yezierska worked as a seamstress in a sweatshop to put herself through college (Prentice-Hall 1). In “Soap and Water” the idea that the dominant culture is clean occurs frequently throughout the story. In “Soap and Water”, Miss Whiteside does not want to recommend the narrator to be a teacher because she feels that the narrator is neglecting to take care of herself. ... The narrator of “Soap and Water” wants to be apart of the majority, to assimilate and fit in with the world. The narrator looses her temper when the dean reminds her that soap and water are cheap and that anyone can be clean. ... In Bread Givers, when Sarah arrives at her college, she marvels at that beauty of the campus and the town. ... Like the narrator in “Soap and Water”, Sarah has longed for this beauty also. ... I smelled from them, the soap and the bathing. ... Like the comparisons in “Soap and Water” the whiteness symbolizes purity. ... Mashah in Bread Givers, keeps her clothes in a soap box under her bead. ... “I only felt an enveloping friendliness going out of his heart to mine” (Bread Givers 276). The narrator in “Soap and Water” meets Miss Van Ness. ... I’m so lonely” (Yezierska, "Soap and Water"110). Sarah in Bread Givers, like the narrator in “Soap and Water” thirsted and hungered for knowledge. “I flung myself into the next term’s work with a fierce determination to wring the last drop of knowledge from each course” (Bread Givers 222).