ebooks Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side (Documents in American Social History) by Rose Cohen in History

Review

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. A hand-to-mouth existenceBy Luc REYNAERTRose Cohen's autobiography is the story of the illegal emigration of an illiterate Jewish Russian family to New York in the 1890s. The family doesn't arrive in the land of `milk and honey' but in a brutal world of `hunger and exploitation'.The father and his child daughter have to work in sweatshops for survival wages: `Fourteen hours a day you sit on a chair; often without a back; close to the other feller hand feeling the heat of her body. Fourteen hours with your back bent. Your eyes close to your work you sit stitching often by gaslight. In the winter your body is numb with cold. In the summer; no sun. The black cloth dust eats into your very pores.'When the two come home; they live with the whole family of seven in two rooms; where the sun never comes in.On top of that; there is the daily anxiety for loosing one's job. This became a reality in the massive and extreme depression of the `memorable years' of 1893-1894. People survived on a loaf of bread per day and could barely (or not) pay the rent with their savings.As a reaction; labor became organized (`Each of you can do nothing.')When there is a sparkle of hope and love (marriage); religion becomes an insurmountable barrier. There is fanaticism on both sides and the `others' speak `wild talk'This moving and sometimes very emotional autobiography is a tale of pure survival in a world without pity and solidarity. It reminds us from where we all come from.Highly recommended.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. More Like A JournalBy LisbethInteresting reading and very informative about the NYC immigrant experience. It read more like a journal than a narrative. I enjoyed this book but I wasn't "compelled" to keep reading; although I did. I wish ther had been more detail about her later life but I realize this was not possible.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. An Immigrant's StoryBy GeoffreyWonderful memoir of a young Russian girl's immigration to the U.S. She and her family left modern-day Belarus for New York in the late 19thC. It almost could considered as a follow-on to "Fiddler on the Roof."