I Go to America: Swedish American Women and the Life of Mina Anderson

by Joy K. Lintelman

Near the end of her life, Mina Anderson penned a lively memoir that helped Swedish novelist Vilhelm Moberg create "Kristina," the central female character of his beloved emigrant novels, a woman who constantly yearns for her homeland. But Mina's story was quite different.

Showcasing her previously untranslated memoir, "I Go To America" traces Mina's trip across the Atlantic to Wisconsin and then the Twin Cities, where she worked as a domestic servant, and her move to rural Mille Lacs County, where she and her husband worked a farm, raised seven children, and contributed to rural Swedish community life.

Mina herself writes about how grateful she was for the opportunity to be in America, where the pay was better, class differences were unconfining, and children--girls included--had the chance for a good education. In her own words, "I have never regretted that I left Sweden. I have had it better here."

Author Joy Lintelman greatly expands upon Mina's memoir, detailing the social, cultural, and economic realities experienced by countless Swedish women of her station. Lintelman offers readers both an intimate portrait of Mina Anderson and a window into the lives of the nearly 250,000 young, single Swedish women who immigrated to America from 1881 to 1920 and whose courage, hard work, and pragmatism embody the American dream.

Joy K. Lintelman is a professor of history at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota . Her specialties include immigration history and women's history.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Sweden, Book Club

288 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2009

Reviews

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about my great-grandmother. Has been nominated for the MN Book Award.

[Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "I Go to America", Joy Lintelman has written a very readable and interesting account of the immigration of Swedish women to Minnesota at around the turn of the twentieth century, using the very effective backdrop of the diary of Mina Anderson, who later in her life recorded her thoughts on her life as an immigrant at the time. Anderson’s account allows Lintelman a wonderful launching point to explore the meanings of immigration for Swedish women in detail, and Scandinavian groups in general in turn of the century Minnesota. "I Go to America" should provide much information on the place of single Swedish women in the immigration patterns of the period and among both other Scandinavian immigrants and American society as a whole.

Lintelman, in using Anderson’s diary and the writings of other single Swedish women who made the journey from Sweden to America in the period between the 1880s and the 1920s, a group that made up a high percentage of immigrants from Sweden at the time, challenges many prevailing attitudes towards this group. Exemplified by writings such as novelist Vilhelm Moberg, whose literary creation Kristina is a melancholy figure who obediently followed her husband to Minnesota while forever regretting the loss of her beloved Sweden, this view took Swedish and other Scandinavian women as often following more proactive men to America and remaining always in longing for their lost homelands. Using letters and diaries such as Anderson’s, Lintelman argues that this view is incorrect and that the high percentage of single Swedish women made the transatlantic journey as much for economic reasons as their male counterparts and regretted the immigration just as little.

In the end, this is a highly evocative and interesting resource on Scandinavian American gender roles around the turn of the century both in their homelands and the Upper Midwest and would be very useful for anyone interested in the subject.

[Mary-Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am glad that this non-fiction book was written. It helped to confirm some of the impressions I had of my parents' early life. My mom and dad both were young Swedish immigrants who came to the U.S. in search of a better life than what could be had in Sweden in the 1920s.

I especially appreciated vignettes from the first portion of the book--that's where Minnie describes her life as a newly-arrived immigrant to the city, someone who turned to domestic work and found satisfaction in it. My mother's life evidently was much like Minnie's at that point. This book resonated with me more than the popular Moberg series of novels ever did, precisely because Minnie embodied the strong, unmarried, Swedish woman archetype who embraced her new life in a new country and never looked back.

[Jamie]

One of my professors from Concordia! After taking a couple of classes from her, as well as an independent study, I'm looking forward to reading this.

[Barbara Irene Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very well researched book concerning Swedish immigration to America. Ms. Lintelman focuses primarily on why so many single women decided to immigrate and how they survived the many obstacles they encountered, the most daunting of which was not knowing how to speak English. Mina Anderson is the main focus of the book and it is her experiences that she wrote in her memoir that forms the core of the book. Vilhelm Moberg, when he wrote his "Emigrant" series, was given permission to use Mina's memoir in his research because it was a primary source of the stuggles that so many faced. Ms. Lintelman does a fine job in portraying the many hardships that Mina and others like her endured when they left their homeland behind in search of a new life in America.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the subject matter - Swedish women who immigrated to the U.S. Certainly some of my relatives were among them. It was an academic read, that's for sure. Not in the least bit creative nonfiction. But, the subject matter was interesting enough that it held my attention.

[Staci · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally different than what I thought it would be...a ton of research went into this book to recreate what life was like for single Swedish women emigrating to the US at the turn of the last century. I was really impressed with how well this book is put together.

[Marilyn Pettigrove · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a study of Swedish young women who came to America, mostly for a better life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is wrapped around a real immigrant, Minnie Anderson Halgren. The book goes through the various reasons that young women came here and how they fared once they got here. It delves into what they did for a living and how communities of Swedes tended to stay together.
Minnie Anderson was young and just couldn't get ahead in Sweden so when the opportunity of he passage being sponsored came, she grabbed at it. It describes why she went from one place to another finally settling and marrying near Minneapolis. She was a very hard worker, raised seven children and worked the farm alone many months of the year while her husband made more consistent money as a tailor in the city. She was strong willed and involved. Her life wasn't easy, but she didn't complain. She was somewhat of a prolific writer and wrote a memoir which Vilhem Moberg used to create a character in a best selling four book series about Swedish immigrants.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mina Anderson wrote a memoir of her life and immigration to Minnesota, and each chapter of Mina's own memoir in I Go to America is followed by Joy Lintelman's rather academic but interesting research on Swedish female immigrants and their experiences. It's a book within a book, and an homage to our Swedish foremothers (but not our Norwegian foremothers). In contrast to Vilhelm Moberg's Kristina, Lintelman says, most Swedish immigrant women came of their own volition in search of a better life and found it, including better wages, less work, more opportunities to find a husband, and the chance to buy land. (Lintelman and Anderson omit mentioning whose land it was until the 1850s, but that's a whole other discussion of genocide.) Mina Anderson's whole life, and the lives of others, the way to learn English from a bilingual cookbook, the dances, the propaganda about the American dream and the moralizing literature about staying in Sweden, the hats, the move from Wisconsin to Minneapolis, the winters alone on a farm little kids, the hospitality of neighbors, the sled trips to gather wood across the lake that took all day and were mostly play when Mina was a child in a small village in Sweden. Highly recommend, athough it is a bit dry in places.

[viemag · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Go To America: Swedish American Women and the Life of Mina Anderson by Joy K. Lintelman is a well researched book by Concordia College professior Joy K. Lintelman. It is based on the writings of a Swedish American woman named, Mina Anderson but Lintelman supports her conclusions about life for Swedish Women Immigrants with statistics, stories of Swedish Immigrant women, and other research studies. I marveled at the sense of adventure, the longing for a better life, and the strength of Mina Anderson and all women immigrants. I found myself wondering if the women immigrant stories of other nationalities were similar. I also marveled at what I learned. For some reason I always thought women immigrants arrived with their husbands and families. I never suspected that there were young women who immigrated as single women looking for a better life. That really shows my bias and lack of knowledge about the immigrant story. An amazing story.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

RPL 2024 Open Books Challenge- Book by a Minnesota author. This was really well-done! I liked how each chapter started with Mina’s memoir, then the author expanded on what she had written using other immigrants’ stories, government records, or other research about the time period to give a fuller picture of the Swedish immigration experience. Especially fun to read as Amy’s getting in to the American Girl books and comparing Kirstin’s story to Mina’s. I really liked the section on the importance of Swedish-language newspapers for fostering community, distributing information, and providing a sense of belonging, like the better parts of social media today.

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative but also repetitive

This book was clearly very well-researched, and provides great insight into the lives and motivations of the single Swedish women that emigrated to the US in the 1860's through the early 1900s. The author uses Minnie Halgren's memoir as a basis and then enriches it with additional context from the places and times of the memoir.

My main complaint was with an excerpt of the memoir being shown, and then the author paraphrasing it (sometimes more than once). She tended to get a little "much" on emphasizing certain points by restating them repeatedly.

Still, I learned some things and I found it to be a generally interesting read.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well researched book on the experience of Swedish immigrant women to the United States. Mostly based on the journals of Mina Anderson, who wrote of her experiences as an immigrant to Minnesota, the author rounded out the narrative with examples from other women, historical studies and newspaper articles.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was OK. I didn't find it as interesting as I thought it would be. It's an academic look at Swedish women immigrants and their experiences in the late 19th century midwest.

[Allan Olson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice read on Scandinavian history in early America

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

INTERESTING TO ME BECAUSE MINA ANDERSON EMIGRATED FROM THE SAME PROVINCE--DALSLAND--THAT MY GRANDMOTHER, GREAT-GRANDMOTHER AND GRANDFATHER EMIGRATED FROM.

[James E. Kurle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting and insightful. An analysis of Mina Anderson's lifelong memoir of her decision to emigrate and her experience in America. Mina's story is one side of the immigrant experience differing from that presented in Wilhelm Moberg's "Emigrant" series. To Mina there was no looking back and no second thoughts about her decision to emigrate. At the same time it was very interesting to me that Mina's "memoir"was available to Moberg as he wrote his narrative of the Swedish emigrant experience. It was remarkable too that this hardworking individual found the time and maintained the commitment in order to write this diary of her experiences and participate in literary and intellectual activities while managing a farm and raising five children.

[Julia]

I'd been hoping to pair this as a nonfiction companion to Moberg's Emigrants series as there is an interesting story to be told here, but I was unable to make it past page 60 due to poor editing. The sheer amount of repetition in only the first two chapters swiftly depleted my attention.

[Karin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, non-fiction look at Swedish American women who immigrated to America in the late 1800s.

[Denise]

I went to a Swedish Genealogy one day conference where the author, Joy Lintelman was speaking. Her presentations were really good, so I bought her book.