Work as a mode of assimilation in twentieth-century Jewish American literature

The focus of this article is on Jews and their relationship to labor, especially as portrayed fictionally. In discussing immigrant writers such as Anzia Yezierska and Abraham Cahan and the post-immigrant author Daniel Fuchs I will consider the working conditions of early twentieth-century immigrants and their attitudes toward work. I will demonstrate that while education may have been the preferred method for escaping ghetto poverty and whitening (i.e. reaping the full benefits of being an American) work is the actual means for gaining that education. The article concludes with an analysis of changes that have occurred through the Americanization of the post-assimilationist generation, represented by Philip Roth and Adam Langer.