Hungry Hearts

Anzia Yezierska (1880-1970) was a novelist born in the Russian Empire and immigrated to New York City. She ran away to the circus when she was 12 years old. Her family immigrated to America in 1890. After just two years in an elementary school, Anzia began working in sweatshops, factories, and as a domestic. Yezierska turned to writing around 1912. She wrote about the struggles of Jewish and later Puerto Rican immigrants in New York's Lower East Side. Turmoil in her personal life prompted her to write stories focused on problems faced by wives. Yezierska's early fiction was released as a book titled Hungry Hearts in 1920. Another collection of stories, Children of Loneliness, followed two years later. Her first novel, Salome of the Tenements was published in 1923. Her fictionalised autobiography, Red Ribbon on a White Horse came out in 1950 when she was nearly 70 years old. Amongst her other works are Arrogant Beggar (1927) and All I Could Never Be (1932).