Migrations and Destinations: Reflections on the Histories of U.S. Immigrant Women

DONNA R. GABACCIA and VICKI L. RUIZ

IN THE 1975 MOTION PICTURE Hester Street, Carol Kane earned an Oscar nomination for her role as Gitl, a young Eastern European Jewish matron who struggled to make a place for herself in New York's Lower East Side and in the process win back the affections of her thoroughly Americanized husband, Jake. Based on a story by Abraham Cahan, the founder of The Jewish Daily Forward, the film captured everyday life and tensions over acculturation and gendered expectations set against the backdrop of a gritty, turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York neighborhood. Feature films that portray immigration through women's eyes are few, yet even the critically-acclaimed Hester Street was shown primarily at art house venues. At the time of its opening, Hester Street's main themes—accommodation, Americanization, wage work, commercialized leisure, and family—were becoming the focus of study for an emerging new generation of feminist historians. But like the motion picture itself, this scholarship on gender and migration seemed to attract limited notice.