Mary Antin

Mariashe (Mary) Antin was born in Polotsk (today in Belarus). Her childhood unfolded amid familial upheaval: her father’s loss of work undermined the family’s middle-class lifestyle, which drove her father to seek a better situation in America in 1891 and compelled Antin and her sisters into apprenticeships. In 1894, she and her mother and five siblings joined her father in Boston. Antin excelled in her American primary school; her supportive teachers published her first story, “Snow,” in Primary Education (1895), only four months after her first English class. Antin’s first book, From Plotzk to Boston (1899; titled From Plotzk to Boston), is a translation of Yiddish letters she wrote to her uncle about her journey and arrival in the United States. She drew on this for her famous memoir, The Promised Land (1912), a paean to the United States which became the first best seller written by an American Jew. Antin became a successful writer and lecturer in American letters, publishing frequently in the Atlantic Monthly and Outlook.