Yekl, now calling himself Jake, sews cloaks on the Lower East Side, dances in the halls and prides himself on being a real American. Then his wife Gitl and their small son arrive from the old country, wearing a wig and speaking only Yiddish, and his carefully built new self begins to come apart.
Cahan’s first novel, from 1896, later filmed as Hester Street; an early, sharp look at assimilation in immigrant New York. Download the free EPUB.