“A Jewish Girl of Mexico:” Anita Brenner and the Article That Won First Prize in The Forward (1925) Marcela López Arellano, Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, México Abstract This article focuses on an autobiographical narrative of Anita Brenner written in 1925 for The Forward, a notable Jewish newspaper in New York City. With this text, she won the “Our Big Prize Contest” in June of that year. It is through an emphasis on the period’s culture and gender perspective that the social and cultural context of the newspaper and Jewish immigrants in the United States of America in the 1920s are investigated. This paper explores the way Brenner asserted herself both as a Jew and as a writer, and reviews the factors, which helped her win the contest, introducing her as a “modern girl,” who utilized her writing flair in the story she had to tell. Introduction1 This essay discusses an autobiographical article by Anita Brenner (August 13, 1905 – December 1, 1974), discovered at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. Brenner’s article was the first place winner of a personal story competition that was published in a Jewish newspaper in New York in 1925. The call for submissions appeared in the English section of the Sunday edition of The Jewish Daily Forward, one of the most significant and popular newspapers among the Jewish immigrant population in the United States at the time. The piece depicts Brenner’s first years in Mexico and the United States. The following essay examines the historical, cultural, and social conditions surrounding Brenner’s narrative when she was nineteen, and the context within which it was written.2 In this case, the personal story is analyzed sociologically and historically. As an autobiographical piece, the characteristics of the text are also explored, as each component of the narrative implies a different approach from the historical perspective of the author, to the targeted reader, the writer’s intentions, the editorial revisions, and finally, the social, cultural, and historical context in which it was created. In autobiographical texts, the writer takes the distinctive role as the central subject.3 In order to situate Anita Brenner’s writing within its historical context, gender is used as a category for historical analysis— a lens illuminating the power dynamics of the social relationships, which constituted Brenner’s wider milieu.4 Gender Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal Volume 15 Number 1 (2018) ISSN 1209-9392 © 2018 Women in Judaism, Inc. All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. 1 identities are constructed in relation to social organizations, specific historical and cultural representations, and factors such as social class, ethnicity, and labour.5 The article is divided into two parts; the first situates Anita Brenner’s story up to 1925. It provides an overview of The Jewish Daily Forward and its relevance to the Jewish immigrant community in New York. This part also introduces the open call for essays through the “Our Big Prize Contest,” which was published in this newspaper in January 1925. The section likewise includes a brief review of Anita Brenner’s submission to the contest and an explanation of the reasons why the newspaper awarded the prize to Brenner. The second part of this essay demonstrates how The Jewish Daily Forward contributed to Anita Brenner’s understanding of her role as a Jewish writer from a very young age. In this section, the article focuses on some of the factors, which contributed to Brenner’s article winning the competition and concludes with a discussion about the significance of historical context to the creation of any type of written tradition. These analytical perspectives add to an understanding of how Anita Brenner’s participation in the autobiographical competition of The Jewish Daily Forward molded her ideas about her own Jewish identity. 1. Anita Brenner and The Jewish Daily Forward Anita Brenner (1905-1974) was born in the city of Aguascalientes, Mexico in August 1905. Her parents, Isidoro and Paula Brenner, were Jews who had emigrated from their native Latvia to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century and later in 1900 arrived in Aguascalientes in search of a better livelihood. The Brenners lived in Aguascalientes until 1916. When faced with the growing instability and violence of the Mexican Revolution, Isidoro Brenner decided to move his family to San Antonio, Texas. Anita Brenner continued her studies in San Antonio, where she spent a semester at a Catholic university. She enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin in 1922, where she only stayed for a year. In 1923, she decided to return to Mexico City to work and study. She registered at the Universidad Nacional de México for extracurricular courses centered on Mexican indigenous culture, ethnography, archaeology, and Latin American literature. In 1924, Brenner started working for the B’nai B’rith, a support agency for Jewish immigrants. This Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal Volume 15 Number 1 (2018) ISSN 1209-9392 © 2018 Women in Judaism, Inc. All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. 2 agency began operating in Mexico because the United States government had, in that same year, restricted the entry of Jewish immigrants to the United States. The immigration restrictions forced many European immigrants to first arrive in Mexico with the hope of later crossing the northern border to the United States. It was also in this year that Brenner wrote her first articles about the Jewish population in Mexico, like “The Jew in Mexico,” written for the New York- based magazine The Nation.6 In September 1924, she began to report about what was happening to the Jewish immigrants who were arriving in Veracruz, Mexico. Brenner sent these reports to Jewish newspapers and news agencies in New York, such as The Jewish Morning Journal, The Jewish Bulletin, and The Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In January 1925, Anita Brenner arrived in New York City, possibly as the result of recommendations made by the anthropologists Manuel Gamio7 and Frances Toor,8 to take classes at Columbia University with the Jewish-German anthropologist, Franz Boas.9 Brenner was a young woman of nineteen when she arrived alone in the city. She found a place to live on Greenwich Avenue near the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a Jewish neighborhood, and home to the offices of many Yiddish and English newspapers. In the United States, newspapers in foreign languages began to appear at the end of the nineteenth century as informative bulletins about maritime transportation, banking, political parties, fraternities, and nationalist movements. There were bulletins in French, German, Yiddish, and Italian. Yiddish newspapers first appeared in New York City in 1885. The Jewish- German language, Yiddish, had emerged in Germany during the sixteenth century when Jewish populations established themselves in Slavic countries. The language was formed with traces of German, Hebrew, and expressions from Slavic languages.10 The arrival of thousands of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in late nineteenth-century Europe boosted the growth of Yiddish culture in the United States.11 Intellectuals who arrived in the United States communicated with other immigrants through various Yiddish publications. The New York Forward, or simply The Forward,12 began as a publication of the Socialist Party and was established by the Jewish Socialist Press in 1897. According to historians Ronald Sanders and Edmond V. Gillon Jr., The Forward became the major Jewish publication in New Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal Volume 15 Number 1 (2018) ISSN 1209-9392 © 2018 Women in Judaism, Inc. All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. 3 York City.13 In 1903, Lithuanian immigrant, Abraham Cahan (1860-1951), a socialist, teacher, and writer, took charge of the paper as editor.14 Trent Peterfield describes him as a talented and versatile editor who became a central figure in some of the major Jewish intellectual enterprises in the United States.15 Cahan established himself in American journalism during the era of media tycoons, Willliam Randolph Hearst16 and Joseph Pulitzer,17 and popularized The Forward despite the criticism of older socialists, who believed that the publication’s reputation deteriorated. However, in the 1920s, “The Forward’s circulation of more than 200,000 was among the largest in the United States, for newspapers in any language.”18 Cahan introduced an English language section in the Sunday paper19 to remain competitive with other Jewish newspapers that published in both Yiddish and English. Under Cahan’s leadership, The Forward abandoned its rigid ideology. The newspaper began publishing letters in which immigrants exchanged complaints, requests, and advice. This was evident in sections like “The Gallery of Missing Men,”20 with notes provided by wives or family members, and the most popular, “Bintel Brief,” Yiddish for “a bundle of letters,” which featured requests for advice from the editor about problems adapting to the country, relationship conflicts, or family problems. Many of the letters came from young women who wanted to start an education, but were faced with opposition from parents and spouses.