Synopses & Reviews
In the wake of World War I, a diverse group of women emigrated from Europe to the United States under austere conditions and adapted in different ways to life in the new country. Based on a major new study that includes in-depth interviews with 100 Italian and Jewish women who immigrated to the New York City area in the early 1900s, this volume explores family and work lives led by these women and the relative importance of cultural factors to the two groups' adjustment to American life. The interviews trace the process of adapting to life in the U.S., paying special attention to the specific experiences of women immigrants and the challenges they faced in surmounting gender and cultural barriers both within their families and in their new communities. This innovative, interdisciplinary study uses feminist approaches to explore immigrant women's lives from childhood to old age. The result is a nuanced view of the similarities and differences between the two groups, whose distinct family structures and cultural backgrounds led to different responses to the same pressures and difficulties.
Review
[A] vivid picture of Jewish and Italian women's adjustment to the new way of living in the United States....important for both women's history and women's studies.MultiCultural Review
Review
[T]he authors have gathered material that will help us unravel women's experiences after mass immigration ended-years that have attracted far too little attention up to now.International Migration Review
Synopsis
Explores a series of questions about the family and work lives of Italian and Jewish women who immigrated to New York City in the early 1900s.
About the Author
ROSE LAUB COSER was Professor Emerita of Sociology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Boston College.LAURA S. ANKER is Professor of American Studies at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.ANDREW J. PERRIN is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.