This unique anthology translates for the first time a little-known body of Yiddish poetry by American Yiddish proletarian writers who identified with the American Left from the 1920s to the early 1950s. Dovid Katz explains how a McCarthy-era "American Yiddish Political Correctness" wrote these leftist poets out of the canon. Amelia Glaser and David Weintraub correct this erasure, recovering the work of thirty poets. Proletpen introduces the reader to an untold chapter of America's tumultuous history during the pre- and interwar period, revealing the depth and power of Yiddish literature through the backdrop of twentieth-century world politics.

Translated by: Amelia Glaser
Illustrated by: Dana Craft
Introduction by: Dovid Katz