The Promised Land

Publisher Marketing: The Promised Land is the autobiography of Mary Antin. It tells the story of her early life in what is now Belarus and her immigration to the United States in 1894. The book focuses on her attempts to assimilate into the culture of the United States. A very personal and very interesting look into the life of a young child moving away from her homeland. Includes several black and white photos. Excerpt "A generation is sometimes a more satisfactory unit for the study of humanity than a lifetime; and spiritual generations are as easy to demark as physical ones. Now I am the spiritual offspring of the marriage within my conscious experience of the Past and the Present. My second birth was no less a birth because there was no distinct incarnation. Surely it has happened before that one body served more than one spiritual organization. Nor am I disowning my father and mother of the flesh, for they were also partners in the generation of my second self; copartners with my entire line of ancestors. They gave me body, so that I have eyes like my father's and hair like my mother's. The spirit also they gave me, so that I reason like my father and endure like my mother. But did they set me down in a sheltered garden, where the sun should warm me, and no winter should hurt, while they fed me from their hands? No; they early let me run in the fields - perhaps because I would not be held - and eat of the wild fruits and drink of the dew. Did they teach me from books, and tell me what to believe? I soon chose my own books, and built me a world of my own." Contributor Bio:  Antin, Mary Mary Antin (June 13, 1881 - May 15, 1949) was an American author and immigration rights activist. Born to Israel and Esther Weltman Antin, a Jewish family in Polotsk, Belarus, at that time part of Russia, she immigrated to the Boston area with her mother and siblings in 1894, moving from Chelsea to Ward 8 in Boston's South End, a notorious slum, as the venue of her father's store changed. She attended Girls' Latin School, now Boston Latin Academy, after finishing primary school. She married Amadeus William Grabau, a geologist, in 1901, and moved to New York City where she attended Teachers College of Columbia University and Barnard College. Antin is best known for her 1912 autobiography The Promised Land, which describes her public school education and assimilation into American culture, as well as life for Jews in Czarist Russia. After its publication, Antin lectured on her immigrant experience to many audiences across the country, and became a major supporter for Theodore Roosevelt and his Progressive Party. During World War I, while she campaigned for the Allied cause, her husband's pro-German activities precipitated their separation and her physical breakdown. Amadeus was forced to leave his post at Columbia University to work in China, where he was one of the pioneers in Chinese geology. She was never physically strong enough to visit him there. During the war, Amadeus was interned by the Japanese and died shortly after his release in 1946. Mary died of cancer, May 15, 1949.