FAQ takes a field trip to Emma Lazarus’ Sitting Room at the American Jewish Historical Society to talk with Executive Director Annie Polland about the poet’s life and her legacy.
The New Colossus was written in 1883, four years before Lazarus’s early death and 20 years before it was put on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. It’s a story about intergenerational identity and how a rich woman found herself identifying with “wretched refuse” that’s disturbingly resonant today.
