The Promised Land (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Mary Antin

Published in 1912, this classic autobiography moves from the harsh repression and brutal pogroms of anti-Semitic Russia to the opportunities and challenges of life in America.  "I began life in the Middle Ages," the twenty-nine-year-old Antin writes, "and here am I still, your contemporary in the twentieth century, thrilling with your latest thought." 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411445581

Reviews for The Promised Land (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

[amelish · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We get it, you were precocious and lucky. And grew up to be earnest.

Mary Antin's memoir about early childhood in a Russian Jewish community, emigrating to Boston (?) with her family, and the process by which American patriotism replaced Judaism as the definitive faith of her character and life. There's an overall tone of nerdy arrogance to the writing, reminiscent of Annie Dillard's and Agatha Christie's writings about childhood, though sadly minus most of the wry humor. But here and there are some beautiful passages evocative of landscape and the individual's smallness relative to the vastness of cultural and national identity.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a wonderful and complicated story of Antin's childhood as she lives first in Russia and then in America. It is a picture of immigration, the search for what is the American dream however it is told, a great appreciation of learning, and a story of all the things that in the end matter more than either wealth of position. Antin's prose is graceful and literary, as well as entertaining throughout. It may start slowly, but this book is worth reading as both historical testimony and document as well as personal narrative and autobiography.