Mary Antin

Mary Antin (1881–1949) was a Russian-born American writer. Born into a Jewish family in Polotsk, in what is now Belarus, she emigrated with her mother and siblings to Boston in 1894 to join her father, attended the public schools and Boston Latin School and published her first book, From Plotzk to Boston, at eighteen. The Promised Land (1912), serialized in the Atlantic Monthly, told the story of her transformation into an American and sold widely; They Who Knock at Our Gates (1914) argued against restrictions on immigration. She lectured across the country until illness ended her public career in the 1920s.