At a glance:

Author: Abraham Cahan
First Published: 1917
Type of Plot: Social realism
Time of Work: 1865-1915
Setting: Czarist Russia and New York City
Principal Characters: David Levinsky, Matilda Minsker, Max Margolis, Dora, Meyer Nodelman, Fanny Kaplan, Abraham Tevkin, Anna Tevkin
Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
Subjects: Immigration or emigration, Jews or Jewish life, Acculturation, Industry, Materialism, Russia or Russian people
Locales: New York, NY, Russia

The Novel

In 1913, in response to a request from the popular McClures magazine for articles describing the success of East European immigrants in the U.S. garment trade, Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward and also a successful English-language novelist, wrote several short stories instead. Subsequently published as a novel, these pieces of fiction permitted Cahan to explore problematic aspects of the process of Americanization, produce vignettes of immigrant Jewish life, and describe the development of a major American industry.

The...

(The entire page is 2112 words.)