Jewish American literature, women writers, Mary Antin, Anzia Yezierska, Rebecca Goldstein, Allegra Goodman; feminism; Jewish Orthodoxy; Judaism; secularization; modernity; Jewish spirituality; ethnicity; class; gender; shtetl; urban Jewish ghetto; assimilation; immigrant experience; patriarchal hierarchy; generational conflicts

My chapter in the book Growing Up a Woman: The Private/Public Divide in the Narratives of Female Development examines spiritual development of Jewish women as depicted in the work of four Jewish American women authors - Mary Antin, Anzia Yezierska, Rebecca Goldstein and Allegra Goodman. It intentionally confronts the authors of two different time periods - before and after World War II. The earlier period of Jewish American women?s literature is represented by Antin?s classic immigrant autobiography The Promised Land (1912) and Yezierska?s collection of short stories Hungry Hearts (1920) while modern Jewish American women?s fiction is exemplified by Goldstein?s novel Mazel (1995) and Goodman?s novel Kaaterskill Falls (1998).