American in the Making, the Life Story of an Immigrant

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By Listen TheBook Posted on May 31, 2023

In Category - Biography & Autobiography

Authors: Marcus Eli Ravage In Year : 1917

Book Language: English

Audiobook: American in the Making, the Life Story of an Immigrant

Introduction
The Prophet from America
The Gospel of New York
The Exodus
To America on Foot
Farewell Forever
First Impressions
The Immigrant's America
"How do you like America?"
Ventures and Adventures
Purifications
The Ethics of the Bar
Shirts and Philosophy
The Soul of the Ghetto
The Tragedy of Readjustment
The Trials of Scholarship
Off to College
In the Mold
The American as He Is
The Fruits of Solitude
Harvey
The Romance of Readjustment

“The sweat-shop was for me the cradle of liberty. . . It was my first university.” Attending lectures and the New York theatre at night; by day sewing sleeves into shirts in a ghetto shop, Marcus Eli Ravage (1884-1965) began his transformation from “alien” to American. His 1917 autobiography is a paean to the transformative power of education. Ravage emigrated from Rumania in 1900, at the age of 16. After working for several years as a “sleever” to save money, he enrolls in the University of Missouri (the least expensive school he can find), where culture shock overwhelms him at first. “I was not sure whether it was a pig or a sheep that bleated, whether clover was a plant and plover a bird, or the other way around.” But he adapts, and eventually embraces “the bigger and freer world” outside the immigrant ghetto. He writes that, because of his university experience, he was no longer “a man without a country.” He had become an American. - Summary by Sue Anderson