Abstract

In her classic immigrant autobiography, The Promised Land (1912)), Mary Antin negotiates her own agency through a dialogue between labor and literacy. Antin weaves the development of her own literacy into the narrative of her sister Frieda's labor on garments. Moreover, Antin's juxtaposition of textiles and texts borrows from the discourse of assimilation outlined by Jane Addams. Addams presented assimilation not through racial evolution, as did many restrictionists and assimilationists of her day. Rather, she presented assimilation along a material historical timeline from European textile handcrafts to modern American Industrial garment production. Though this historically materialists model and Antin's negotiation of her assimilation are complicated by the Fordist link between production and consumption, Antin's weaving of her own experience into that of her sister's allows her to navigate these complexities in order to claim her own agency, and to uphold her sister's dignity.

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