Assimilation; immigration; Anzia Yezierska; Henry Roth; Jewish immigration

In the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, there was a great wave of Jewish immigration, mainly from Central and Eastern Europe, to the United States. Almost half of these immigrants were women. The struggle of the female characters for assimilation into American culture as depicted in early Jewish American Fiction is the main issue addressed in the paper. The books used for the analysis are Anzia Yezierska´s collection of short stories Hungry Hearts and Henry Roth´s novel Call It Sleep. The ten short stories in Yezierska´s Hungry Hearts narrate about the quest of the young female Jewish immigrants to achieve the American dream. In Henry Roth´s novel Call It Sleep two female characters, the protagonist?s mother and her sister, demonstrate a different attitude towards assimilation and being part of American culture. Even though the Jewish women´s immigration to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century did not differ much from the experience of the other immigrant women, their experience was still influenced by their religion and gender. The paper analyses their search for acceptance and different approaches towards assimilation.