The cultural diversity of America is often summed up by way of a
different metaphors: Melting Pot, Patchwork, Quilt, Mosaic--none of
which capture the symbiotics of the city. Few neighborhoods
personify the diversity these terms connote more than New York
City's Lower East Side. This storied urban landscape, today a
vibrant mix of avant garde artists and street culture, was home, in
the 1910s, to the Wobblies and served, forty years later, as an
inspiration for Allen Ginsberg's epic Howl. More recently, it has
launched the career of such bands as the B-52s and been the site of
one of New York's worst urban riots.
In this diverse neighborhood, immigrant groups from all over the
world touched down on American soild for the first time and
established roots that remain to this day: Chinese immigrants,
Italians, and East European Jews at the turn of the century and
Puerto Ricans in the 1950s. Over the last hundred years, older
communities were transformed and new ones emerged. Chinatown and
Little Italy, once solely immigrant centers, began to attract
tourists. In the 1960s, radical young whites fled an expensive,
bourgeois lifestyle for the urban wilderness of the Lower East
Side. Throughout its long and complex history, the Lower East Side
has thus come to represent both the compulsion to assimilate
American culture, and the drive to rebel against it.
Mario Maffi here presents us with a captivating picture of the
Lower East Side from the unique perspective of an outsider. The
product of a decade of research, "Gateway to the Promised Land"
will appeal to cultural historians, urban, and American historians,
and anyone concerned with the challenges America, as an
increasinglymulticultural society, faces.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(2)
