Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus"

Resource Kit by
Maeera Shreiber

Module Content

Introduction

Introduction

Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus”—otherwise known as “The Statue of Liberty Sonnet”—is this nineteenth-century Jewish American poet’s most famous achievement. Most of us are familiar with the lines, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...” However, there is much more to this well-crafted poem which offers a powerful vision of America as a diasporic refuge—a timely image in light of current conversations about immigration, refugees, and global migration.