Academic Writing

Immigration as the Promised Land: “I am only one of many whose fate it has been to live a page of modern history. We are the strands of the cable that binds the Old World to the New. As the ships that brought us link the shores of Europe and America, so our lives span the bitter sea of racial differences and misunderstandings. Before we came, the New World knew not the Old; but since we have begun to come, the Young World has taken the Old by the hand, and the two are learning to march side by side, seeking a common destiny.”—Mary Antin Using Mary Antin’s The Promised Land, explain how the experience of European immigrants in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries embodied the promises and virtues of American society. You may want to consider how life in America allowed immigrants to transform their lives, and what their particular accomplishments in the “New World” indicated about their worthiness as citizens. In making your case for America as The Promised Land, please support your interpretation with relevant examples from Antin’s text.