In the wake of World War I, a diverse group of women emigrated from Europe to the United States under austere conditions and adapted in different ways to life in the new country. Based on a major new study that includes in-depth interviews with 100 Italian and Jewish women who immigrated to the New York City area in the early 1900s, this volume explores family and work lives led by these women and the relative importance of cultural factors to the two groups' adjustment to American life. The interviews trace the process of adapting to life in the U.S., paying special attention to the specific experiences of women immigrants and the challenges they faced in surmounting gender and cultural barriers both within their families and in their new communities. This innovative, interdisciplinary study uses feminist approaches to explore immigrant women's lives from childhood to old age. The result is a nuanced view of the similarities and differences between the two groups, whose distinct family structures and cultural backgrounds led to different responses to the same pressures and difficulties.

ROSE LAUB COSER was Professor Emerita of Sociology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Boston College. A distinguished sociological pioneer, she wrote eight books and countless articles. She also sat on the editorial boards of numerous journals including Gender & Society, Dissent, and The American Journal of Sociology, and was President of the Eastern Sociological Society and Vice President of the American Sociological Association.
LAURA S. ANKER is Professor of American Studies at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. Her publications on women and immigration explore the use of life histories as historical sources. She is currently working on a book based on immigrant narratives from the Connecticut Federal Writers Project in the 1930s.
ANDREW J. PERRIN is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Introduction
Leaving for America
The Unknown Future
Family Structure: Some Theoretical Concepts
Fertility and Social Structure
Home Life
Coming to America?: Work as a Motive for Migration
Women and Work in the "Golden Medina"
Work, Unions, and Identity: "To Make for Herself a Person"
Appendix: List of Interviewees