Red ribbon on a white horse / by Anzia Yezierska ; introduction by W.H. Auden ; afterword by Louise Levitas Henriksen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Yezierska, Anzia, 1880?-1970.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Genre:

Fiction.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

228 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

Revised edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Persea Books, 1987.

Summary:

First published in 1950, Red Ribbon on a White Horse is Anzia Yezierska's autobiography, her life as she saw it, from the Polish ghetto to the sweatshops of New York's Lower East Side and then to Hollywood, where she was at the height of her success.

Yezierska had earned her way to Hollywood by writing with vivid emotional power about the Jews of the immigrant community in which she grew up. In 1921 her collection of stories, Hungry Hearts, was sold to Samuel Goldwyn. Soon she was meeting the famous of the movie capital. But instead of the joyful communion with other artists she imagined, she found "the fish-market in evening clothes." She was shocked by the crassness of Hollywood and so burdened by the guilt of having made a profit from the stories of her people's sufferings that she stopped writing.

After years of silence, she found her voice again with this autobiography. Here she offers a sharp portrait of Hollywood in its golden years, as well as a revealing account of the important WPA Writers Project. Its focus on success and failure -- how they felt and what they meant to Yezierska as a woman and an artist -- make Red Ribbon on a White Horse a universal document.

Included in this edition are the original introduction by W. H. Auden and an afterword by Yezierska's daughter and biographer. Louise Levitas Henriksen.

Contents:

Chapter I Hester Street 25

Chapter II Tiled Bathroom of My Own 36

Chapter III The Picture of the Century 41

Chapter IV Important People 56

Chapter V The Myth That Made Hollywood 63

Chapter VI Not a Woman

Not a Writer 71

Chapter VII My Life

A Column a Day 75

Chapter VIII A Cat in the Bag 83

Chapter IX Poor People 88

Chapter I All Whom I Ever Loved 101

Chapter II End of a Dream 114

Chapter III A Woman of Letters 120

Chapter IV My Last Hollywood Script 129

Chapter I The Silent Years 137

Chapter II The New Poor 145

Chapter III Relief 149

Chapter IV Working for the Government 156

Chapter V The New Society of Arts and Letters 161

Chapter VI Fellowship of Necessity 165

Chapter VII Selling New York to the World 172

Chapter VIII Wordage Machine 176

Chapter IX Payday 182

Chapter X Jeremiah's "Dybbuk" 193

Chapter XI Bread and Wine in the Wilderness 198

Chapter XII Red Ribbon on a White Horse 215.

ISBN:

0892551240

OCLC:

15519989