Streets - A Memoir of the Lower East Side

Bella Spewack

Summary

“A startling, clear-eyed” memoir of an immigrant girl’s childhood in early 20th century NYC from the journalist and Tony-winning co-author of Kiss Me Kate (Booklist).   Born in Transylvania in 1899, Bella Spewack arrived on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side when she was three. At twenty-two, while working as a reporter with her husband in Europe, she wrote a memoir of her childhood that was never published. More than seventy years later, the publication of Streets recovers a remarkable voice and offers a vivid chronicle of a lost world.   Bella, who went on to a brilliant career write for stage and screen with her husband Sam, describes the sights, sounds, and characters of urban Jewish immigrant life after the turn of the century. Witty, street-smart, and unsentimental, Bella was a genuine American heroine who displays in this memoir “a triumph of will and spirit” (The Jewish Week).

Available since: 03/15/2017.

Print length: 180 pages.

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