Mary Antin was born in 1881 to a Jewish family in Polotsk, in what was then czarist Russia. Had her family not immigrated to the Boston area in 1894, Mary would have grown up uneducated, married an Orthodox Jewish man, raised children and never become assimilated into society. Thanks to the American public school system, Antin became large Americanized, learning the English language and American customs. By eighteen, she had published her first autobiographical volume, which later became her mas...