In 1942, YIVO held a contest for the best autobiography by a Jewish immigrant on the theme Why I Left the Old Country and What I Have Accomplished in America. Chosen from more than two hundred entries, and translated from Yiddish, the nine life stories in My Future is in America provide a compelling portrait of East European and American Jewish life in the immigrant generation at the turn of the twentieth century. In their own words, the immigrant writers convey the challenges of the transition between the Old and New Worlds.