Anzia Yezierska was born in a small town in Russian Poland sometime in the 1880s. When she was about ten, she came to America with her impoverished family, whose plight and prej­udices she described in Bread Givers (1925). For years, she struggled to achieve an education and to write. Her story collection Hungry Hearts (1920) brought her fame, but over the years, Yezierska also suffered criticism and neglect. She died in 1970, and today her works―four novels, two short story collections, autobi­ographical essays, and a memoir, Red Ribbon on a White Horse (1950)―are considered classics of Jewish American writing.

Deborah Feldman (foreword) is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Unorthodox, the basis for the Emmy Award-winning Netflix series. She was raised in the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and now lives in Berlin, Germany.