In the novel, Bread Givers, author Anzia Yezierska tells the story of life as an immigrant in the Untied States. For many, the U.S. was the key to a better life; a life free of economic depression and religious oppression. America was a fantasy to many. To much dismay, the realization that America was not a land of golden streets comes too quickly. Flooded with people, New York's Lower East Side became a place of poverty for most. Immigrates found themselves living in slums, where dirt and disease ran rampant. However, according to Yezierska, life as a female was much worse.
In the 1920's, an immigrant's gender ultimately decided what experience he or she would have in America, for it was far better to be a male than a female. In Russia, the "Old World", it was preached that a woman was only on Earth to make her husband happy. In order to get into Heaven, women had to have a man at their side. America, the "New World, was mingled with different cultures. A female in America, no longer had to live solely for her husband. It is this that compels Sarah to start thinking of herself, seen in this excerpt; "More and more I began to think inside myself, I don't want to sell [fish] for the rest of my days. I want to learn something. I want to do something. I want some day to make myself for a person and come among people"(Bread Givers, page 134). .
The father was the main upholder of old Jewish beliefs in the Smolinsky household, as opposed to the New World beliefs of the Americans. It was this clash of conceptions that was the cause of numerous confrontations. This can be seen after the father drove away Jacob, Bessie's true love. Sara titles him " a tyrant more terrible than the Tsar from Russia."(Bread Givers, page 65) Sara's sisters could not enjoy their lives as American's because of the strong hold their father had on them. Reb Smolinsky was from an older generation of thinking, a time when women were not regarded as equals and were in fact more so thought of as property.