Wings

By Anzia Yezierska

Shenah Peshah a young lonely janitress living a painfully secluded life in poverty. She is given hope when she meets a young sociologist who moves into her building to study the people he writes about and she falls in love with him.

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: Jan 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781515448440

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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Wings

by Anzia Yezierska

©2020 Wilder Publications

Wings 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: 978-1-5154-4844-0

WINGS

My heart chokes in me like in a prison! I’m dying for a little love and I got nobody—nobody! wailed Shenah Pessah, as she looked out of the dismal basement window.

It was a bright Sunday afternoon in May, and into the gray, cheerless, janitor’s basement a timid ray of sunlight announced the dawn of spring.

Oi weh! Light! breathed Shenah Pessah, excitedly, throwing open the sash. A little light in the room for the first time! And she stretched out her hands hungrily for the warming bit of sun.

The happy laughter of the shopgirls standing on the stoop with their beaux and the sight of the young mothers with their husbands and babies fanned anew the consuming fire in her breast.

I’m not jealous! she gasped, chokingly. My heart hurts too deep to want to tear from them their luck to happiness. But why should they live and enjoy life and why must I only look on how they are happy?

She clutched at her throat like one stifled for want of air. What is the matter with you? Are you going out of your head? For what is your crying? Who will listen to you? Who gives a care what’s going to become from you?

Crushed by her loneliness, she sank into a chair. For a