Mary Antin was a Russian Jewish immigrant who wrote about the experiences of many immigrant women at the turn of the twentieth century. She was one of the first to express the aspirations of many immigrants who sacrificed their old family traditions in order to become American.

Mary Antin was born Mashke Antin on June 13, 1881 in Polotzk, Russia. She was the daughter of Israel Antin, a scholar and unsuccessful shopkeeper, and Esther Weltman. Her family was among the many Jews living in the Pale of Settlement who experienced violence, restriction, and persecution because of pogroms unleashed after Czar Alexander II’s assassination. Israel left Russia for Boston in 1891. His family joined him three years later.

Mashke wrote about her voyage to the United States in a series of letters in Yiddish to her uncle Moses. These letters were later translated into English and were titled From Plotzk to Boston. With the help of Lina Hecht, a Jewish philanthropist Mashke befriended in Boston, the letters were published in the American Hebrew magazine, and again in 1899 as a separate volume.

Having arrived to Boston at the age of thirteen, Mashke’s first step towards Americanization was her name change to Mary. Although Mary’s family suffered economic setbacks, they supported her education. Within six months, she completed the first five grades of school and published her essay "Snow" in Primary Education. She continued her education at Boston Latin School for girls, the public preparatory school for Radcliff College. Her father Israel grew disillusioned with his unfulfilled dreams of the once promise of American fortunes. His rejection of the traditional Jewish religion motivated Mary to also abandon the Jewish faith.

Mary became active at Hale House, a settlement house established in Boston by Edward Everett Hale. At the Hale House’s National History Club, Mary met Amadeus William Grabau, a geologist and doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mary and Amadeus married and moved to New York in 1901. Amadeus was the son of a Lutheran priest, and later in life Mary would suffer social alienation for marrying a non-Jewish man.

Mary enrolled in Barnard College and later in the Teacher’s College, but never finished her degree. She named her only daughter after Josephine Lazarus, who encouraged her to begin her literary career in earnest by writing about her experiences as an immigrant in America. Mary published "Malinka’s Atonement," a short story about an impoverished Russian Jewish girl who yearned for education, in the Atlantic Monthly in 1911. This story, along with several other short stories and essays, became the basis of her major work published in 1912 called The Promised Land.

The Promised Land is considered one of the first great works of American Jewish literature as well as a classic tale of American assimilation. Mary discusses her experience of being reborn in the United States, where freedom and opportunity replaced the harshness of ancient customs. She deals with the disintegration of family life and the dehumanizing impacts of slum conditions. She depicts her rejection of orthodox Judiasm in favor of Americanization, and yet she sees value in the moral foundations of that religion.

For example, in chapter fourteen of her book, Mary outlines the disintegration of her family life that occurred after they immigrated to America and rejected the Jewish faith, which she notes was common among immigrants. She views the disintegration of family life to be a necessary sacrifice for first and second-generation immigrants so that their future generations can benefit as Americans.

Mary continued to publish essays throughout her life. Different points of view permanently separated Mary from her husband at the outbreak of World War I. The separation from her husband, social isolation because of her rejection of Judiasm, and other misfortunes in Mary’s life caused her to suffer from a nervous break down from which she never recovered. She died on May 15, 1949 at a nursing home in Sutton, New York.