Somewhere along the busy months of life, I stopped writing my Badass Women series, who knows why (I really can’t remember what happened). It seems to have slipped by the wayside, and one of my resolutions is not to let this happen again. So here we go, and watch out for one badass woman every few weeks 😉
Not many people recognize the name Emma Lazarus, but most know at least one thing she wrote, even if they aren’t aware of it:
‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she
with silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’
This is actually only the second half of her poem “The New Colossus,” which Lazarus wrote to raise money for the base of the statue, and which is featured on a plaque inside of the Statue of Liberty.
Lazarus was a child of immigrants herself, of Portuguese and German descent, and of Jewish heritage, and her writing and poetry shaped the U.S.’s identity as an immigrant nation. But I get ahead of myself.
She was born in New York City in 1849 to a wealthy family and was highly educated, speaking and/or studying at least four languages throughout her childhood and adolescence. At 17 her first work was published and the year after that her first book, a collection of poetry and translations. Throughout the next decade she published more collections of poetry and books.
It wasn’t until the 1880s, after reading Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda, that Lazarus began to reflect upon her own heritage and consequently advocate on behalf of Jewish refugees, and she argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland years before the term Zionism was even used. She encouraged not only compassionate treatment of immigrants, but also their right to the dignity they so desired and deserved. Her poem “Song of a Semite”, perhaps her second most famous work, is a celebration of Jewish culture and of her own roots.
Although she was one of the first successful Jewish authors in the U.S., her persona is intricately tied up with the infamous poem that so many of us have read without knowing that it was her words, and to this day she remains more or less in obscurity. She died at the age of 38, only four years after she wrote “The New Colossus” and more than a decade before her words would come to rest on the State of Liberty. The U.S. has been, and always will be, a nation of immigrants, and the sooner everyone not only realizes this, but wholly embraces it, the better off we all will be.
