Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in American Studies
Episode: Julia Wagner, "Hester Street" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Description: Joan Micklin Silver's groundbreaking debut feature film, Hester Street (1975), vividly portrays the immigrant experience through the eyes of Gitl (Carol Kane), a young, Orthodox Jewish woman who arrives in New York City from Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Reunited with her already-assimilated husband, Gitl finds they now have little in common and she is forced to adjust to a new way of life. Hester Street achieved international critical and commercial success, and Kane received a Best Actress nomination at the 1976 Academy Awards.
 Marking the film's 50th anniversary, Dr. Julia Wagner's landmark book Hester Street ...