Marie Jastrow (1898–1991)

Marie Jastrow, née Grunfeld, was the elder of two daughters in a German-Jewish family in Danzig. She was educated in a German school and lived in Serbia for a while before emigrating to the USA with her family at age ten. They settled in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. In 1921, Marie married Abraham Jastrow, a car salesman, and had two children. Marie Jastrow began writing as a young girl, but always received rejection slips from publishers. She was 82 years old when her first book, A Time to Remember: Growing Up in New York Before the Great War, was published in 1979. It was followed in 1986 by a sequel, Looking Back: The American Dream Through Immigrant Eyes, 1907–1918. Both books movingly describe the family's ordeals -- the decrepit ships from Europe, the fears of being turned back from Ellis Island, the deprivation and poverty, the tenements of New York City -- as well as the beginning of their success in the new land.