The American Spirit in the Writings of Americans of Foreign Birth

by Unknown

MARY ANTIN

With the publication in 1912 of Mary Antin’s “The Promised Land,” a new interest was awakened in the experiences of the foreign-born, and since then several important autobiographies of immigrants have appeared.

Miss Antin, who was born in Polotzk, Russia, in 1881, and came to America in 1894, was educated in the public schools of Boston, later attending Teachers’ College and Barnard College, Columbia University. Many an American boy and girl is familiar with her fine tribute to the part of the public school in her Americanization.

In 1914 she published “They Who Knock at Our Gates,” “a complete gospel of immigration,” in which she aims to refute the material and selfish arguments of the restrictionists, basing her plea for a nobler and more liberal treatment of the immigration question upon the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence. It is from this volume and “The Promised Land” that the following selections are taken.