The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-03-13
Immigrant Girl Fought Way
 ToSuccess
TT HE greatest story, after all, is t

TT HE greatest story, after all, is the
 | story lived-the struggle story of the winning fight, that man enters with life against him, and leaves with life as his friend. That is the story of Lin coin, of Dick Wilmington. of Carngeie. and of Edison. It is also the story of Anzia Yezierska.
 Miss Yezierska is the living symbol of the difference between luck and pluck. Twenty years ago she came to this coun- try in the steerage, poor, uneducated immigrant girl, seeking to win the fruits of the Promised Land with no more capital than limitless capacity for work, and the faith that moves mountains. Today she ranks among the leaders of Americas story writers and novelists. And the vast span be- tween these poles is bridged by herself alone.
 Anzia Yezierska's greatest story is her life. She marched through her childhood years in the drone of song of defeat-the defeat of squalor and poverty-the defeat of an empty stom- ach, more tantalized than satisfied by bits of stale bread, bought cheaper than fresh, and a meagre share of speckled potatoes and onions with soft spots on them. Although she learned well enough what it means to be turned into the street for want of rent. she never knew bow it felt to have a birthday with d cake with candles on it and lots of grand presents for nothing"
 Then came the working paper" days days of scrubbing in sunless cellars, days of ceaseless toll in airless sweat shops, days of washing and ironing other peoples clothes, while her own were too ragged to entitle her to look for better employment; days of back breaking standing over the steaming stoves of swarming Ghetto eating places.
 And borrowing it's way from under the crushing weight of hardships came the pulsing cry of hunger for beauty, as pitiful as the cry of hunger for bread:
 Il want to do something with my head and my feelings-all day long only with my hands 1 work v
 Her first release came in the con sciousness of her ability to express her unrest in writing. Once during lunch hour, while the other girls in the shop were eating and laughing and talking, she wrote out on her greasy lunch bag all the thoughts that had been choking her for weeks: First, rebellion against the sheer bitterness of living then the determination to transform life from a crushing burden into a thing of shining loveliness.
 But the first sweet taste of release was when she was forced to realize how painfully inadequate were her means of expression, her tools to carry on the job of her choice. Like a dammed-up torrent, she was stifling with rich, vital things to say and could find no outlet for them through sheer lack of Ian guase. The school of hard experience had left her ignorant of the niceties of dlction, the subtleties of logical, orderly thought, the delicate shades of word play.
 Often says Miss Yezierska, ''I'd read smooth-flOwing stories about noth. ing at all, and I'd ask herself: Why is 1t that so many of the educated, with nothing to say, know how to say that nothing with such an easy flow of words, while l, with something so ach- ing to be said, can say nothing?" In proportion as her grasp of the means of expression grew surer, her de. sire to make use of this new ability be- came so burningly urgent that some thing had to happen-and it did. Her first story was accepted and pub lished.
 ss0 When l saw my first story in print says Miss Yezierska, 'T felt big ger than Columbus, who discovered the new world. felt bigger than the man who built the Brooklyn bridge or the highest skyscraper in New York. I walked the streets holding the magazine tight in my hands, laughing and crying to myself: I had an idea and I thought if out did it : did it"
 Then another story was published and another--and another. In 1919 Edward J. O'Brien designated a piece of Miss Yesierska's work as "the finest imaginative contribution to the short story made by an American artist dur ing that year. Finally her stories grew into books-"Hungry Hearts," "Saiome of the Tenements." and, most notable of all, perhaps. Children of Loneli-