Tales of immigrant groups in New York

[Sanity Claws]

I'm interested in reading tales that describe experiences of first and second generations in NYC. I don't care what ethnic group or even what era.
Any recommendations?

[pnorman]

1. "WORLD OF OUR FATHERS"

http://www.amazon.com/World-Our-Fathers-Journey-European/dp/0814736858/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239483091&sr=1-1

It covers the Jewish experience in this nation, but it's primarily New York. VERY good reading!

pnorman

[Sanity Claws]

3. It does sound interesting

It sounds more like a sociological view than I was looking for. I was thinking of fiction, something written by a first or second generation American in which he or she drew on the Old World or somehow tried to make sense of a different world.

[pnorman]

2. "How The Other Half Lives" By Jacob Riis

This pioneering work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis focused on the plight of the poor in the Lower East Side, and greatly influenced future "muckraking" journalism. The original work featured fifteen halftone images and forty-three drawings based on photographs. Due to the recent invention of magnesium flash, Riis was able to venture into the dimly lit areas of tenements and document the wretched conditions in which the "other half" lived and worked. Later editions of his work were printed with photographs replacing most of the drawings, possible thanks to improved printing techniques. Riis's work was also pioneering in that he mostly attributed the plight of the poor to environmental conditions. However, his work was not without its flaws. He divided the poor into two categories: deserving of assistance (mostly women and children) and undeserving (mostly the unemployed and intractably criminal). He wrote with prejudice about Jews, Italians, and Irish, and he stopped short of

Jacob Riis
calling for government intervention. Still, the catalyst of his work was a genuine sympathy for his subjects, and his work shocked most wealthy New Yorkers who had no idea such a world existed within a few miles of their own opulent neighborhoods.

http://www.authentichistory.com/postcivilwar/riis/contents.html

It's on-line there, complete with illustrations. A few are "iconic" of that period.

pnorman

[Sanity Claws]

4. Riis is truly great

However, he was an outsider and I'm looking for fiction written by a first or second generation American who draws on both the old and the new world.
Thanks for responding.

[babylonsister]

5. I just bought this from the library:

'Call It Sleep' by Henry Roth

It looks really good!

http://www.amazon.com/Call-Sleep-Novel-Henry-Roth/dp/0312424124

Review
Novel by Henry Roth, published in 1934. It centers on the character and perceptions of a young boy, the son of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants in a ghetto in New York City. Roth uses stream-of-consciousness techniques to trace the boy's psychological development and to explore his perceptions of his family and of the larger world around him. The book powerfully evokes the terrors and anxieties the child experiences in his anguished relations with his father and realistically describes the squalid urban environment in which the family lives. The novel was rediscovered in the late 1950s and early '60s and came to be viewed both as an important proletarian novel of the 1930s and as a classic of Jewish-American literature.

Review
"One of the few genuinely distinguished novels written by a twentieth-century American." --Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review

"Arguably the most distinguished work of fiction ever written about immigrant life...Surely the most lyrically authentic novel in American literature about a young boy’s coming to consciousness." --Lis Harris, The New Yorker

"Roth has done for the East Side Jew what James T. Farrell is doing for the Chicago Irish in the Studs Lonigan trilogy.... When his characters are speaking pure Yiddish, Roth translates it into great beauty....The final chapters in the book have been compared to the Nighttown episodes of Joyce’s Ulysses; the comparison is apt." --John Chamberlain, The New York Times

[Sanity Claws]

6. This is exactly what I'm looking for

I might look into the Studs Lonigan trilogy too.
I really appreciate this.

[Lex]

7. You've probably read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" but it is

excellent on this topic and memorable long, long after it's read.