The Lost "Beautifulness"

By Anzia Yezierska

A mother dances on the edge of self-destruction when she paints her kitchen white for her son returning home from the military but has her rent raised by her cruel landlord as a response.

Anzia Yezierska wrote about the struggles of female Jewish immigrants in New York's Lower East Side. She confronted the cost of acculturation and assimilation among immigrants. Her stories provide insight into the meaning of liberation for immigrants—particularly Jewish immigrant women.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781515448525

Anzia Yezierska

Anzia Yezierska was a Jewish American novelist born in Mały Płock, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. She emigrated as a child with her parents to the United States and lived in the immigrant neighborhood in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

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The Lost Beautifulness

by Anzia Yezierska

©2020 Wilder Publications

The Lost Beautifulness is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4852-5

THE LOST BEAUTIFULNESS

Oi weh! How it shines the beautifulness! exulted Hanneh Hayyeh over her newly painted kitchen. She cast a glance full of worship and adoration at the picture of her son in uniform; eyes like her own, shining with eagerness, with joy of life, looked back at her.

Aby will not have to shame himself to come back to his old home, she rejoiced, clapping her hands—hands blistered from the paintbrush and calloused from rough toil. Now he’ll be able to invite all the grandest friends he made in the army.

The smell of the paint was suffocating, but she inhaled in it huge draughts of hidden beauty. For weeks she had dreamed of it and felt in each tin of paint she was able to buy, in each stroke of the brush, the ecstasy of loving service for the son she idolized.

Ever since she first began to wash the fine silks and linens for Mrs. Preston, years ago, it had been Hanneh Hayyeh’s ambition to have a white-painted kitchen exactly like that in the old Stuyvesant Square mansion. Now her own kitchen was