Bengali Harlem and the lost histories of South Asian America

Resource Information

The work Bengali Harlem and the lost histories of South Asian America represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Waubonsee Community College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Bengali Harlem and the lost histories of South Asian America

Statement of responsibility

Vivek Bald

Creator

• Bald, Vivek

Author

• Bald, Vivek

Subject

• Harlem (New York, N.Y.) -- Race relations | History -- 20th century
• Harlem (New York, N.Y.) -- Social life and customs | History -- 20th century
• Minorities -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Muslims -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• South Asia -- Emigration and immigration | History -- 20th century
• South Asian Americans -- Cultural assimilation
• South Asian Americans -- History -- 20th century
• Bengalen
• United States -- Emigration and immigration | History -- 20th century
• United States -- Ethnic relations | History -- 20th century
• United States -- Race relations | History -- 20th century
• Working class -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Ḥaidar, Dādā Amīr, 1900-1989
• Ḥaidar, Dādā Amīr.hy
• USA
• Einwanderung

Language

eng

Summary

"In the final years of the nineteenth century, small groups of Muslim peddlers arrived at Ellis Island every summer, bags heavy with embroidered silks from their home villages in Bengal. The American demand for 'Oriental goods' took these migrants on a curious path, from New Jersey's beach boardwalks into the heart of the segregated South. Two decades later, hundreds of Indian Muslim seamen began jumping ship in New York and Baltimore, escaping the engine rooms of British steamers to find less brutal work onshore. As factory owners sought their labor and anti-Asian immigration laws closed in around them, these men built clandestine networks that stretched from the northeastern waterfront across the industrial Midwest. The stories of these early working-class migrants vividly contrast with our typical understanding of immigration. Vivek Bald's meticulous reconstruction reveals a lost history of South Asian sojourning and life-making in the United States. At a time when Asian immigrants were vilified and criminalized, Bengali Muslims quietly became part of some of America{u2019}s most iconic neighborhoods of color, from Tremé in New Orleans to Detroit's Black Bottom, from West Baltimore to Harlem. Many started families with Creole, Puerto Rican, and African American women. As steel and auto workers in the Midwest, as traders in the South, and as halal hot dog vendors on 125th Street, these immigrants created lives as remarkable as they are unknown. Their stories of ingenuity and intermixture challenge assumptions about assimilation and reveal cross-racial affinities beneath the surface of early twentieth-century America."--The dust-jacket front flap

Biography type

contains biographical information

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

305.891/4073

Illustrations

• illustrations
• maps
• plates

Index

index present

LC call number

E184.S69

LC item number

B35 2013

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography