Uprising, by Margaret Peterson Haddix, is historical fiction about the lives of Bella, Yetta, and Jane. It takes place in the early 1900s. Bella is a young immigrant girl from Italy, searching for a better life in America, and trying to send money back home to her family in Italy. Yetta is a Jewish immigrant who wants to strike, get higher wages, and form a better union. Jane is a rich American girl who’s tired of being seen as just a dumb rich girl, who takes an interest in the strikers. All three of them are united because of the strikes, and their desires to be seen as more than just “useless” girls. I think this book was alright, though it had a few glaring issues. In the story, Bella cannot get a better life, because of her …show more content…
It provides good descriptions of the hardships they go through, and the things they have to do, just because they wanted a better life. One example of a good description of immigrant life occurs on page 212 it says “The tenement, with its cracked walls, its chipped sink, its hovering stench of rotten food and unwashed bodies.” Which shows that the immigrants had to live in places that were the same quality as prisons. It shows that even though they worked hard to get here and they work hard everyday, they live in squalor. Another example of this is when on page 216, Yetta says “It’s just that rent works out to two dollars a week, and we still owe the landlord extra from when we were on strike. And potatoes are five cents a pound, and with the three of us, it’d be ninety cents a week for milk and-” and then Bella chimes in and says “And Yetta and me, we’re only making six dollars a week, each. If we’re lucky and the bosses pay it all.” This shows that they frequently were denied their pay and even if they got paid, it was hardly ever enough. You can tell from these quotes that the book is good at describing immigrant life in the beginning of the 20th