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Tomorrow is Beautiful, by Lucy Robins Lang; The Autobiography of Sol Bloom; American Spiritual Autobiographies, edited by Louis
- Abstract
Behind the cloying title of Mrs. Lang’s energetic and infectious autobiography we discover the symbolic figure of Jewish immigration at the beginning of the century: Chaye the peddlerke. Neglected, even by Mrs. Lang (and no one else has recorded her existence, much less her concentrated flavor), she cannot be denied credit for translating the poetic welcome at the base of the Statue of Liberty into the pungent prose of Mott Street. Here, at her stand composed of two empty fruit boxes on which were displayed damaged oranges, old apples, gum drops, and salted pumpkin seeds, Chaye spoke to new arrivals from Russia and Poland. Did they miss the old country? “Everybody should run away from Russia, everyone should come to America. What did you have in Russia? Pogroms you had! Why don’t you read the papers and see for yourself? So you don’t like America? Woe is me and woe is to Columbus!” Though she could speak no English she educated the newcomers to American ways; for America, she knew, was an attitude, not a dialect. When Lucy’s family arrived from the boat, Chaye laid out bread and salt, symbols of plenty; then, “from the folds of her shawls she produced a bottle of castor oil, and ordered each of us to take a dose because we were greenhorns and must purge Europe from our systems.”
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