How does Hilda Satt Polacheck’s autobiography reflect the larger 19th century immigrant experience?

Formatting Requirements:

Paper Length: 800-1000 words

Double Spaced

Size 12 font

Chicago Style Citations (i.e. footnotes)

Quotations must be incorporated into your own sentences

Topic Prompt:

Consider the following quotes:

“The hardships Hilda Satt faced an immigrant in the 1890s have a familiar ring to them.”[1]

 “Hilda Satt, like every immigrant, had to shape a new identity that reconciled her homeland culture with her American experience.”[2]

Main Topic Question:

How does Hilda Satt Polacheck’s autobiography reflect the larger 19th century immigrant experience?

As you formulate you answer, you may want to consider the following questions:

-What ‘push’/’pull’ factors attracted Satt and others to the United States? (i.e. What is driving them from their home nations/drawing them to the U.S.?)

-How did her daily life change after moving to the U.S.?

-What institutions in the United States did immigrants use to help them identify as Americans?

These are by no means the only points/themes you may include in your paper!  There are a TON of different ways this document reflects the immigrant experience (as delineated in lectures, the textbook, and the assigned readings).

Sources you may use in this essay (you are NOT permitted to use outside sources):

-Going to the Source, Chapter 4, “Immigrant to the Promised Land,” p. 78-99

-Pearson Revel textbook

-Classroom Lectures by Dr. Cornelius

-Daniel E. Bender, “The Perils of Degeneration: Reform, the Savage Immigrant, and the Survival of the Unfit,” Journal of Social History 42, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 5-29.