"America and I"

In a semi-autobiographical article from her book "Children of Loneliness," Polish-Russian immigrant Anzia Yezierska describes her changing relationship with America. Learn this list of words from a writer who once struggled with the English language.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 11 Unit 1's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: A Cause Greater Than Self, The New Colossus, The Statue of Liberty Address, poems about America, America, America and I, What Is an American, Growing Up Asian in America, Let America Be America Again, The Four Freedoms, The Bill of Rights, What Is Freedom, Is the American Dream Still Possible, The Declaration of Independence, poems about immigrants, Money, A Raisin in the Sun, Who Burns, Roberto Acuna, Barack Obama, The Right to Fail
20 words 435 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. stifle
    smother or suppress
    Choked for ages in the airless oppression of Russia, the Promised Land rose up--wings for my stifled spirit--sunlight burning through my darkness--freedom singing to me in my prison
  2. clamor
    utter or proclaim insistently and noisily
    My young, strong body, my heart and soul pregnant with the unlived lives of generations clamoring for expression.
  3. sterile
    deficient in originality or creativity
    In the golden land of flowing opportunity I was to find my work that was denied me in the sterile village of my forefathers.
  4. cease
    put an end to a state or an activity
    For the first time in America, I'd cease to be a slave of the belly.
  5. simper
    smile in an insincere, unnatural, or coy way
    Like a hungry cat rubbing up to its boss for meat, so I edged and simpered around them as I passed them the food.
  6. avid
    ardently or excessively desirous
    How could they know the gnawing ache of my avid fingers for the feel of my own, earned dollars?
  7. scant
    less than the correct or legal or full amount
    The scant meals I could afford only sharpened my appetite for real food.
  8. tenement
    a run-down apartment house barely meeting minimal standards
    When all were asleep, I used to creep up on the roof of the tenement and talk out my heart in silence to the stars in the sky.
  9. vain
    unproductive of success
    Maybe this welfare man came to show me the real America that till now I sought in vain.
  10. efficiency
    skillfulness in avoiding wasted time and effort
    I didn't know exactly what it meant--efficiency--but if it was to make the worker happy at his work, then that's what I had been looking for since I came to America.
  11. utopia
    ideally perfect state
    "America is no Utopia. First you must become efficient in earning a living before you can indulge in your poetic dreams."
  12. vocational
    of or relating to an occupation
    I went away from the vocational guidance office with all the air out of my lungs.
  13. chimera
    a grotesque product of the imagination
    I felt that the America that I sought was nothing but a shadow--an echo--a chimera of lunatics and crazy immigrants.
  14. vast
    unusually great in size or amount or extent or scope
    With every seeking, every reaching out I only lost myself deeper and deeper in a vast sea of sand.
  15. undaunted
    unshaken in purpose
    But undaunted, they pressed on--through danger--through famine, pestilence, and want--they pressed on.
  16. indomitable
    impossible to subdue
    They made no demands on anybody, but on their own indomitable spirit of persistence.
  17. sympathy
    sharing the feelings of others, especially sorrow or anguish
    And I--I was forever begging a crumb of sympathy, a gleam of understanding from strangers who could not understand.
  18. revelation
    an enlightening or astonishing disclosure
    Then came a light--a great revelation!
  19. perish
    pass from physical life
    I feel like a man who is sitting down to a secret table of plenty, while his near ones and dear ones are perishing before his eyes.
  20. drudgery
    hard, monotonous, routine work
    My very joy in doing the work I love hurts me like secret guilt, because all about me I see so many with my longings, my burning eagerness, to do and to be, wasting their days in drudgery they hate, merely to buy bread and pay rent.
Created on 十一月 7, 2014 (updated 十一月 9, 2014)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.