"Jurgis acquires the reading habit": language and literacy in early Lithuanian-American immigrant life

ENThis study explores the literacy practices of Lithuanian, immigrants who settled in Chicago during what has been termed the Great Wave of Immigration, from approximately 1880 to 1920. I examine the economic, political, social, cultural, and individual circumstances under which these immigrants and their children acquired literacy, both in Lithuanian and in English. I have employed an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating historical documents, such as letters, newspapers, parish jubilee books, and school records; literature of the period, such as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle; secondary readings in immigration history; and ethnographic interviews with Lithuanian immigrants and/or their children. I have completed over twenty-five extensive interviews. Participants were asked about their family relationships, formal schooling history, attitudes towards education and English language usage, and early experiences with reading and writing. The results of this study reveal that a need for affiliation with friends and relatives in Lithuania, as well as with fellow workers in linguistically and culturally diverse Chicago, provided the motivation needed for acquiring literacy. My research suggests that, to a great extent, reading and writing were collaborative activities, not the solitary, individual acts that we often assume them "naturally" to be. [...].