'Snow' Printed in Primary Education

The publication of "Snow" in the educational journal Primary Education is the quiet miracle at the center of Mary Antin's account of her Americanization. It is the moment when a twelve-year-old Russian Jewish girl, who had been studying English for only four months, saw her own words printed out in clear black and white, with her name at the end, and felt her whole consciousness suddenly transformed. The event is preserved in the memoir as a document copied from a tattered copy of the journal, treasured for fifteen years, a record that proves both what the Russian Jew can do with an adopted language and the vigilance of the public-school teachers who watched over her. More than any single lesson or ceremony, this first appearance in print is the point at which the immigrant child became a writer, the instant when the idea was born that she could write again and see her writing printed for people to read.

The Composition and Its Teacher

The composition itself, titled "Snow," is a simple child's essay that begins with a definition: snow is frozen moisture which comes from the clouds, and now the snow is coming down in feather-flakes. The paper was uncorrected, a fact the editor of Primary Education noted when publishing it, and it was the work of a Russian child twelve years old who had studied English only four months and had never before written in the language. The teacher who submitted it was Miss Dillingham, of Chelsea, Massachusetts, and it was she who called Mary to her desk one day after school was out and showed her the printed composition, her own words that she had written out of her own head, with her name at the end. Nothing so wonderful had ever happened to the girl before. The printed characters composing her name, MARY ANTIN, seemed strange to her all of a sudden, and she stared at them in delicious confusion, asking herself whether that was really she, and what relation the words out of her own head had to the girl alone there with Miss Dillingham and the printed page between them.

The Birth of the Writer

The realization that followed was huge and bewildering, an idea so vast that her mind scarcely could accommodate it: she could write many, many, many things, she could write a book. This was the moment when she became a writer, though she had always loved to write and had written letters whenever she had an excuse. What had never occurred to her before was to sit down and write her thoughts for no person in particular, merely to put the word on paper. The printed page changed that. The memoir confesses that the author is ashamed of her flippant talk about vanity when she remembers the association of this dear friend, Miss Dillingham, with her earliest efforts at writing, and it pleases her to remember that to her teacher she owed her very first appearance in print. Vanity, she insists, is the least part of it.

The Teacher's Quiet Method

Miss Dillingham's method was to say only a little and look at Mary, trusting her to understand. Once she lectured the girl about living a shut-up life, wanting her to go outdoors; Mary had been repeatedly scolded and reproved on that score by other people and had only laughed, saying she was too happy to change her ways, but when Miss Dillingham spoke, she saw that it was a serious matter, though the teacher said only a few words and looked at her with a smile that was only half a smile, and the rest a meaning. Another time Miss Dillingham had a great question to ask, touching Mary's life to the quick; she merely put her question and was silent, but Mary knew what answer she expected, and not being able to give it then, she went away sad and reproved. Years later she had her triumphant answer, but her teacher was no longer there to receive it. The same quiet authority appears in the schoolyard episode, when Miss Bland, another teacher, made Mary understand, somewhat as Miss Dillingham had done on the occasion of her whispering during prayer, that it was proper American conduct to avoid religious arguments on school territory.

The Larger Arc of the Printed Word

The publication of "Snow" belongs to a chain of public performances through which Mary Antin constructed her American identity. The Washington's Birthday poem, recited before forty Fellow Citizens in clean blouses and extra frills, was another such moment, when she stood thin, pale, and hollow, with a shadow of short black curls on her brow, and lifted up her voice in praise of George Washington, her pronunciation faulty and her declamation flat, but with the courage of her convictions. The graduation day, when she was known in her school district as the smartest girl in the class and all eyes were turned on the prodigy, was yet another, an occasion that ended in the humiliation of the thank-you blunder, when Mr. Swan, the principal, waved his hand to silence her and she realized the enormity of what she had done, suffering agonies of shame as she was mobbed and lionized by people who wanted to shake hands with the prodigy of the day. The pattern in all these scenes is the same: the immigrant child who had once accepted ill-usage from the Gentiles as one accepts the weather, who had wiped Vanka's spit from her face and thought nothing at all, now steps forward to claim public space through her own words. The printed "Snow" is the first and purest instance of that claim, the moment when the words out of her own head first took on the permanence and authority of print, and the shy, bookish girl who had waited years for her first day at school, who had watched her father lead his children to school with long strides of eagerness while the rest of the family ran and hopped to keep up, began to understand that she could write her way into the American story.