Transcript

5.21.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebeccah Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated April May
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twenty twenty six. As a reminder, RADIOI is a reading
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service intended for people who are blind or have other
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disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
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join me now for the first article, which is titled
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The Queen of the Ghetto gave New York's immigrant community
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a voice. A century later, its re emerging Aziya Yazirska
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wrote from experience, then worked hard to make sure her
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work found an audience. Then a new audience found her.
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By Fred Nattis in the eighteen nineties, the crowded Jewish
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enclave on New York's Lower East Side, filled with horses,
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push carts, clothes lines, and Hebrew shop signs, drew fascination
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and derision from the American public. This emigrant community was
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considered exotic and creative. It was also decried as squalid
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and foreign. At the same time that Uptown audiences were
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flocking to Yiddish theaters, novelist Henry James was writing with
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alarm about the Hebrew conquest of New York. Growing up
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in this crucible of a New America, a Jewish immigrant
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named Azia Yazirska, through sheer force of personality, would overcome
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prejudice to become one of the Roaring twenties most popular authors,
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one whom a New York newspaper dubbed Queen of the Ghetto.
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Yazirska's writing gave voice to the ghetto's dwellers as she
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documented the struggles, particularly of immigrant women, to lead full
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lives in the United States. Her work helped non immigrants
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understand the striving of the foreign born, and though her
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fame has wavered, her work remains as vital today as
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it was one hundred years ago, capturing the immigrant experience
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with the vividness rarely matched in American letters. Yazirska's family
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arrived in New York from Poland in eighteen ninety, when Yazirska,
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the youngest of nine children, was about ten years old.
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They were among the two million to three million Jewish
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people who migrated to the US between eighteen eighty and
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the early nineteen twenties. While her parents encouraged her brothers
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to pursue careers, they expected their four daughters to gain
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a minimal education then do menial work in sweatshops before
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quickly marrying her father, Bernard stressed that a woman without
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a man was less than nothing. Yazirska disagreed, and her
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father came to call her blood and iron for her wilfulness.
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When she was still a teenager and working long hours
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in a laundry, she left home and took a room
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on East sixty third Street in the Clara DeHirsch Home
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for Working Girls, where staff prepared emigrant girls to be
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carmt workers or servants, or to train as stenographers. This
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was the first phase of Yazirska's effort, as some of
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her later fictional characters would say, to work myself up
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for a person. A benefactor provided her with a scholarship
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to Teachers College at Columbia University. After graduating in nineteen
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o four, she became a cooking instructor in city schools,
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teaching though was not her calling. She later described the
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work as a treadmill of deadness. Yazirska's nineteen eleven marriage
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to Arnold Levitas, a typographer, proved no escape. After giving
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birth to their daughter, Louise in nineteen twelve, Yazirska detailed
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her ensuing discontent with the role of stay at home
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mother in an unpublished essay, The Rebellion of a Supported Wife.
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She ended the marriage in nineteen sixteen and dedicated herself
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to writing short stories For several years. Yazirska collected rejection slips.
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She was brim with ideas, but the writing didn't come easy.
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As she described it, sometimes the vivisection I must commit
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on myself to create one little living sentence leaves me
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spent for days. Yazirska developed a style she termed Immigrant English,
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mimicking the idioms of New York's Yiddish speakers. I told
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her my head was on wheels from worrying. Her characters
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are hungry for food and for fulfillment, and feel impeded
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in the effort to become a person in America. Their
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relentless drive reflects the author's rage at women's subordinate roles,
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at their poverty, and at the widespread disdain they received.
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As the narrator says in the short story How I
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Found America, Without the public's understanding, the immigrant would forever
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remain driven back upon himself, corroded by the very richness
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of the unused gifts within his soul, her own gifts.
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She was deter herman to use. In nineteen seventeen, Yazirska
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was in her mid thirties, had published only a few stories,
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and was unable to find full time teaching work, so
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she followed her mother's advice to direct her complaints as
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at a department store to the top. On a cold
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day late that year, she dropped in unannounced, into the
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Columbia University office of John Dewey, a major force in
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progressive education. Dewey was a dean at Teacher's College, where
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Yuzirska had trained. That day, she spoke passionately to him
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about her dreams. The tall sage was stunned and charmed.
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She gave him several short stories to read, and Dewey
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grew infatuated. Soon he was writing her love letters and poems.
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In one, he prophesied that from Yazirska, a great song
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shall fill the world. Dewey bought her a typewriter, encouraged
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her to audit his graduate seminar, and to help subsidize
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her writing, employed her on a sociology project in Philadelphia.
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He also forwarded an essay of hers to the New Republic,
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The romance between upper crust philosopher and passionate immigrant, which
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was to inspire many of Yazirska's later writings. Didn't last
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more than a year. After the break up, Dewey demanded
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she return his letters. She refused, and lifted some of
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his phrases for upper class characters in her fiction. After
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the new Republic ran the piece Dewey had sent them,
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editors began snapping up her stories. The critic Edward J.
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O'Brien gave Yazirskas The Fat of the Land the top
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ranking in his annual anthology of Best Short Stories for
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nineteen nineteen. The tale offered a fresh portrait of the
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immigrant Jewish mother in the character of Hannah, a woman
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of frayed nerves and wild emotional swings. When her children
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snatched food from her market basket, she shouts, murderers, what
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are you tearing from me? My flesh? From? Where should
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I steal to give you more? The children prosper, while
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Hannah's old country ways remain in embarrassment. As adults, they
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settle her in a comfortable town house with servants. Ambivalent
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about her new status, Hannah is caught between worlds. She
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feels at home neither. During a return visit to the ghetto,
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nor amid the new comforts of the fat of the land.
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When Hufton Mifflin published Yazirska's short story collection Hungry Hearts
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in nineteen twenty, sales were sluggish. Serving as her own publicist,
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she knocked at the door of Hurst newspaper columnist Frank
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Crane and handed him a copy of the book. In
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his syndicated column, Crane wrote with awe about Yazyirska, insisting
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that her stories revealed an alien people's naked soul. That's
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when Hollywood came calling. In the nineteen tens and twenties,
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film producers, many of them Jewish, were looking for stories
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that highlighted the humanity of Jewish immigrants at a time
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when groups such as the Emigration Restriction League and supporters
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of eugenics were stoking fears of foreigners. Movie studios produced
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more than three dozen silent films set in the Jewish
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ghetto in the nineteen twenties, making the ghetto picture its
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own genre. In nineteen twenty one, the pioneering phil magnate
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Samuel Goldwyn offered Yazirska ten thousand dollars for film rights
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to Hungry Hearts and put her on salary to complete
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the script. She stepped off a westbound train in Los
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Angeles in January nineteen twenty one, wearing a simple blue suit,
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felt hat, and sandals. Journalists had gathered to cover her arrival,
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and before climbing into a limousine, she spun tales to them,
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suggesting that Goldwyn's contract had saved her from hard labor
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in Manhattan's sweatshops and laundries. She did not mention her
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long stints as a teacher and writer. Headlines followed sweatshops
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Andderella When's fortune in movies, Yet Yazirska soon wearied of
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the star treatment and the studio system. The script was
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completed in a few months, and she briefly remained in
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Hollywood to work on a novel, but found no inspiration.
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After rejecting contracts from Goldwyn and producer William Fox, founder
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of Fox Film Corporation, she returned East for the most
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productive period of her life. In nineteen twenty three, she
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published her first novel, Saloam of the Tenements, which featured
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a street wise Jewish girl who marries an upper class philanthropist.
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Famous Player's Laski, the predecessor to Paramount Pictures bought the
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film rights for fifteen thousand dollars, and the movie appeared
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in nineteen twenty five. In that same year, Doubleday published
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Yazirska's finest novel, Bread Givers, a coming ev age tale
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with echoes of Louisa may Alcott's Little Women, Yazirska describes
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the fate of a group of four sisters, three of
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whom are forced into dubious marriages by their father, Moesha Smolensky. Sarah,
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the feistiest of the sisters, breaks away from her family
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as a teenager. In their frequent arguments, her father, like
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Yuzirska's own, calls Sarah blood and iron. After many struggles,
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Sarah achieves independence by becoming a school teacher. In a coda,
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Sarah and her husband, a school principle, take in her
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widower father, unruly as ever, whom Sarah has found selling
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chewing gum on the streets. A reviewer in The New
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York Times hailed the novel's raw, uncontrollable poetry, but it
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was the last of her books to sell well. Yazirska
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wrote two more novels to diminishing interest, and the nineteen
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twenty nine stock market crash wiped out her Hollywood earnings.
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Within a few years, the one time Queen of the
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Ghetto applied for government relief and joined the New Deal's
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Federal Writers Project, where for one assignment she employed her
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creative talent to describe the different species of trees in
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Central Park. In nineteen fifty, her autobiography, Red Ribbon on
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a White Horse, with the foreword by the poet W.
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H Auden, gained critical praise but few readers. She wrote
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book reviews for The New York Times, but otherwise lived
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out her days far from the spotlight, and died in
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nineteen seventy at a California nursing home after a stroke.
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Her work would soon emerge from obscurity after a chance rediscovery.
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In the late nineteen sixties. Alice Kessler Harris, a British
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born historian later a professor at Columbia University, was researching
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Jewish participation in New York's labor movement. Finding refferences to
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Yazirska in Yiddish materials, she took breaks from the library's
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microfilm machines to read Yaziska's out of print books. In
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the early nineteen seventies, As the women's movement gained momentum,
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Kessler Harris shared her photocopy of the novel with publishers,
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painting Yazirska as an unsung hero of an earlier feminist movement.
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In nineteen seventy five, thanks to her efforts, Percia Books
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published a new edition of Bread Givers. Now a century old,
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the novel has sold more than four hundred thousand copies
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since its re issue. Many readers still identify with its
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portrait of a demanding immigrant father. I can't tell you
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the number of Chinese and Indian and Nepalese who've written
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to me to say how the book resonates. Kessler Harris
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tells Smithsonian. The father in the book is clearly an exaggeration,
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but that exaggeration is familiar to so many people from
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different cultures that it's one of the things that give
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the book its standing power. Yazirska's blood and iron, the
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passion and stubbornness that informed her prose, explain her endurance
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and the jolt of recognition her words continued to offer readers,
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not bad for someone who once said of her early
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days that she was just one of many new Americans
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beating out their hearts at your gates for a breath
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of understanding and accompanying this article fun fact, who was
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Anzia Yazirska. Yazirska was a fearless and imaginative promoter of
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her own work, and even lobbied her publisher in Vain
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to have Herbert Hoover write the forward to Hungry Hearts,
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her nineteen twenty short story collection. When Samuel Goldwyn produced
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a nineteen twenty two film inspired by Hungry Hearts, director E.
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Mason Hopper filmed it authentically write where the stories are
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set in New York's Lower eath east Side. Next, when
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America found itself ready to roll, Route sixty six, stretching
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from Chicago to Los Angeles, was the Road of endless possibilities.
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The country's mother road. Started out as a way to
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get from point A to point B, but quickly became
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the host of a culture and a symbol of freedom.
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By Elana Shrr, A road trip today can feel like
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an industrial affair. You travel eighty miles per hour on
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six lane highways, where brightly let exits deposit you at
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twenty four hour fuel stops and Chaine motels. Yet not
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that long ago route sixty six, a two lane highway
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was the height of modernity. See America's Wonderland crowed nineteen
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forties billboards advertising the road, which then represented the fast
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lane to the future, connecting Chicago to California and a
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shining example of early interstate travel. When cars were new
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in the early nineteen hundreds, railroads offered the most reliable
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long distance transportation. Thoroughfares called highways were often unpaved paths
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along what had once been hunting trails or wagon ruts.
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Many had poor signage and were prone to washouts, and
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featured terrifying corners that might be fine for a horse
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but wreaked havoc on new fangled motor cars. In nineteen sixteen,
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the federal government stepped in passing the Federal Aid Road
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Act and offered states money to develop major highways. Then,
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in nineteen twenty one, Congress mandated that federal funds be
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used to connect those roads into an organized interstate system.
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The government push was welcomed by an Oklahoma businessman named
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Cyrus Avery, a prominent member of the American Association of
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State Highway Officials. Avery successfully argued that Americans would be
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best served by improving the tangled yarn of roads running
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through the Midwest to the coast and building connections between them.
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On November eleventh, nineteen twenty six, Route sixty six became
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an official federal highway, but the road was far from complete.
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Only around eight hundred miles of the commissioned two thousand,
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four hundred forty eight miles between Chicago and Santa Monica
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were asphalt. The rest were paved with dirt, gravel, bricks,
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or even wooden boards. To hasten completion, Avery organized envoys
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from the eight states traversed by Route sixty six to
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promote the new highway with advertisements, maps, and even a
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nineteen twenty eight foot race from Los Angeles to New
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York City, the latter chosen in hopes of attracting East
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Coast visitors. The Bunyan Derby, as it came to be known,
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took eighty four days and reportedly left one hundred forty
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four of its one hundred ninety nine entrants hobbled. Only
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fifty five runners finished, and the winner, Andy Payne, a
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member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, used his twenty
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five thousand dollars grand prize. Around five hundred thousand dollars
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to day to pay off his family's farm, and fittingly
17:14
by a car. Meanwhile, road crews were working their way
17:19
across what Avery promoted as the main street of America,
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and the entire stretch was finally paved by nineteen thirty eight.
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By that time, the depression had sent dust bowl refugees
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westward along Route sixty six as they fled the empty
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fields of the Midwest for the golden promise of farm
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work in California. In his nineteen thirty nine novel The
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Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck called the Highway the mother Road,
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evoking the refuge that Oakey's sought, and the routs roll
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in the berth of West coast cities. When the United
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States entered World War II, Route sixty six became an
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artery from military transports heading from forts to courts. After
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the conflict, the highway cruised into its glory days, brimming
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with families and big plymouths eager to tour their newly
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triumphant country. Road trippers gawked at the brick and glass
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of Big City Chicago, towering cigarros in Arizona, or the
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crashing waves of the Pacific America was beautiful, people had
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money and vacation time. Route sixty six was the place
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to spend it. So many travelers hit the road, in
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fact that by mid nineteen fifties, Route sixty six couldn't
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support all the traffic. Bit by bit, the road was
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widened or bypassed in favor of new multi lane highways,
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until the old route was officially demoted from its status
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as a federal highway in nineteen eighty five. Its stretches
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reverted to state controlled byways and county roads. Mom and
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pop establishments began to fade away as the modern world
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rushed past on new interstates. Sections of the original route
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were swallowed up by sand or built over as cities expanded.
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Yet the allure of the roots, gorgeous scenery, and twentieth
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century Americana continues to attract travelers from around the world.
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It's still possible to cover several hundred miles on the
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old road, especially in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona, and
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even grab a cup of coffee and a slice of
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pie at a picturesque cafe in Luther, Oklahoma. The third
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generation of the Threat family as working to preserve one
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historic stop. Alan Threat Senior opened the Threat Filling Station
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in nineteen fifteen to serve black travelers during the treacherous
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days of Jim Crow. As the only black owned business
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between two sundown towns where black travelers were unwelcome, The
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Threat became a haven for black motorists and a site
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of community for locals, hosting barbecues and bagga on a
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full size baseball diamond. Much farther west in the blowing
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sands of the Mojave Desert, Albert o'cura purchased the old
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railway town of Amboy, population zero, in two thousand and
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five and began the painstaking work of restoring its vintage
20:17
gas pumps at mid Century Motels. After Okura's death in
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twenty twenty three, his son Kyle continued his dream of restoration.
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We can't give up, because if not us, Kyle o'cura says,
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then who On a map, Route sixty six might look
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like a mere, choppy diagonal line running from Chicago to
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the Santa Monica Pier. Yet it has helped tell the
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American story. The road is a living thing, and at
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every stop you'll find its caretakers Accompanying the article did
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you know what is the musical Highway? One of Root
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sixty six's strangest attractions came as recently as twenty fourteen,
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when the New Mexico Department of Transportation installed a series
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of custom designed rumble strips outside to Harris, New Mexico.
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When a traveler drove over the strips at precisely forty
21:12
five miles per hour, the vibrations played America the Beautiful.
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It was a feat of imagination and engineering, and short lived.
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By twenty twenty two, because of new asphalt, the song
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was no longer playable in full. And also with this article,
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road shows in these classic movies brash, gritty, sometimes outrageous.
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Root sixty six plays a starring role by Brandon Tensley
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The Grapes of Wrath In this nineteen forty film adapted
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from John Steinbeck's novel, The Jode Family leaves Oklahoma amid
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the Great Depression and heads along Route sixty six towards
21:54
the promise of California. The New York Times lauded the
21:58
dust Bowl migration tale as to deserving of a place
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on a small, uncrowded shelf devoted to the cinema's master works.
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Easy rider. Two men score big in a Los Angeles
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cocaine deal, then ride toward Marty Grass in New Orleans.
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Directed by Dennis Hopper, the nineteen sixty nine film cast
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Root sixty six as a symbol of freedom and helped
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push Hollywood onto a new road of its own, ushering
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in an era when directors with distinct voices and visions
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began to run the show. Two Lane Blacktop, starring the
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singer songwriter James Taylor and Beach Boys co founder Dennis Wilson.
22:39
Monte Hellman's nineteen seventy one cult film tracks a group
22:43
of young street racers tearing through the Southwest. The movie
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evokes a bittersweet moment not long before Root sixty six's
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two lanes were outnumbered by interstate highways. Rain Man. In
22:57
Barry Levinson's nineteen eighty eight dramedy, brothers Charlie Tom Cruise
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and Raymond Dustin Hoffmann travel from Cincinnati to Los Angeles
23:07
to claim an inheritance. They follow stretches of Route sixty six,
23:12
visiting landmarks like the Big Eight Motel in El Reno, Oklahoma.
23:17
The journey to the west and into the past helps
23:20
bridge the brother's estrangement, and finally cars. In John Lassiter's
23:26
two thousand six animated film Lightning mc queen, a talking
23:30
race car is headed to an important race, but winds
23:33
up stranded in the fictional town of Radiator Springs. Once
23:37
a major stop on Route sixty six, he learns of
23:41
the highway's bygone greatness. Cars didn't drive on it to
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make great time when resident recalls, they drove on it
23:48
to have a great time. And finally, the Smithsonian's renovated
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carousel will return to the National Mall for another round.
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The clos Essex Marriago Round is gleaming again. But it's
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more than an amusement. It's a ride through history. By
24:06
Lonnie G. Bunch. The third to take in a museum
24:11
exhibition with all its art and historical significance, is to
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appreciate the meticulous planning that goes into it. Designers create
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galleries around relevant objects. Curators spend years digging through centuries
24:25
old archives. Art handlers agonize over mounting a painting just right.
24:30
Yet one historic item on the National Mall landed at
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the Smithsonian with far less deliberation. Secretary s Dilon Ripley
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first brought a carousel to Washington in nineteen sixty seven,
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calling it a living extension of the museums, although people
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worried it was more silly than substantive. The New York
24:52
Times even reported concerns that the institution was becoming an
24:56
ivy colored Disneyland. Despite the doubts, the Smithsonian has managed
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to maintain Ripley's vision, curating an artifact with the richer
25:06
story than many of our grandest buildings. Carousels were not
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always meant for entertainment. They were originally designed as training
25:15
mechanisms for jousting without tiring a horse. By the late
25:19
eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, the carousel as we
25:24
know it arrived in Europe and then America. The figures
25:28
at this time were mostly made of wood, and other
25:31
animals besides the horse were added to the carousel repertoire.
25:35
World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression
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reduced the available wood for carousel animals, and they began
25:43
to be built of aluminum. The ornately decorated animals went
25:47
out of style, making way for faster roller coasters and
25:51
other forms of entertainment. In nineteen forty seven, a different
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gleaming carousel was installed at gwyn Oak Amusement Park outside Baltimore,
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about fifty miles north of Washington, d c. Open in
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eighteen ninety four, Gwen Oak was built along streetcar lines
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as an invitation to neighbors from all economic strata. Yet
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Black residents, despite constituting about a quarter of Baltimore's population
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by nineteen fifty, were not welcome. Starting in nineteen fifty five,
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an eight year effort to integrate gwen Oak mirrored the
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civil rights push farther south. It began with years of
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picketing the park's All Nations Day, which excluded countries with
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primarily black populations, but over time the gwen Oak protesters
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became bolder, joining the national landscape of students braving hostile
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crowds to attend school in Little Rock, Arkansas, bus riders
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taking to the sidewalk in Montgomery, Alabama, and teenagers sitting
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unbowed at a Greensboro, North Carolina, lunch counter. On August
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twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three, the same day Martin Luther
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King Junior shared his dream with crowds on the National Mall,
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Sharon Langley became the first African American child to ride
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the carousel at Gwyn Oak after hurricane damage shuttered the
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park in nineteen seventy three. The carousel went into storage.
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A few years later, as Ripley's original carousel began to
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show its age, the Smithsonian began looking for a suitably
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grand replacement. Gwen Oak's hand carved beauty, an emblem of
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the struggle for civil rights, fit the bill. For four decades,
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riders of all ages, especially our youngest learners at the
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Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center, have laughed as the Washington Monument
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appeared and disappeared from view. This April, after a detailed renovation,
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the carousel will return to its rightful spot on the
27:56
mall as an unexpected witness to history. This concludes readings
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from the Smithsonian Magazine for to day. Your reader has
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been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have a
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great day.