Hey Everyone !

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My name is Abin Sajan. I was born in Saudi Arabia and raised in India. I lived in India for almost thirteen years till I moved to America in 2005. My parents are completely Indian and everyone in my family are farmers.

Currently, I live in Long Island in a little town called Floral Park. I went to high school in Floral Park Memorial High School. In terms of hobbies, I love to play sports. I like to play football and soccer. I am a very big Giants fan. I am also an avid fan of website designing. I have created a few websites for third parties and it’s a fun hobby on the side.

Book Report

Today, Manhattan is one of the most coveted boroughs in the United States. It is the financial and economic center of the world as well as one of the most cultured and modern cities in the United States. Within all these landscapes and beautiful skylines, Manhattan has a beautiful history behind it.

Currently, the Upper East Side is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in New York City and Harlem is a center for African-American culture. This was not always so. There was a time when Manhattan was farms and rural neighborhoods. In You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan, Jeff Kisseloff explores the history of Manhattan from the 1890s to WWII.

Most history books have the same approach to story telling. The author goes in a chronological fashion and recounts facts about the event. This narrative is very plain, and unless genuinely interested in the topic, very hard to follow. Kisseloff writes an oral history of Manhattan that contains the voices of ordinary men and women that lived during 1890s to WWII. The book is broken into ten parts and each part represents an area in Manhattan (Harlem, Lower East Side, Chelsea, etc.).  He starts off every part with a brief history of the area and then provides narratives of different people that lived in the area.

The book is like a collection of tales. The main focus of the book is not to provide a history of Manhattan. Instead, Kisseloff wanted to preserve the tales of one of the most remembered generations of our time. This generation witnessed a cultural revolution in African American history and shaped the current layout of Manhattan. They lived in old tenements and low-rise apartments. As we lost this generation to time, Kisseloff wanted to capture the tales they had to tell. That’s the point of this book: preserve the tales told by ordinary men and women about one of the most defining times in the history of Manhattan.

In the Harlem section, Elton Fax talks about his first visit to Harlem and his encounter with the giant police man, Lacy, on 125 Street.  Lacy was a big black traffic cop that stopped blacks and whites alike. Seeing a black man in authority was one of the most memorable thoughts in the mind of Elton Fax. Anecdotes like that of Elton Fax create a sense of nostalgia in the book. It creates an imagery of some old timers sitting around a fireplace and recounting their favorite stories.

That is what I liked most about this book. There is no defined way the reader is supposed to feel. It is a very raw piece of work. He gives us a brief history and then some personal anecdotes about the place. After reading the tales, we can have our idea about the place. It is sort of like painting. In high school, I helped my fellow classmates in my art class. Even though we all had the same topic (which was the human skeleton) to draw, all of our drawings were completely different. The details and facts behind the topic were the same for everyone, but all of us had a different way of thinking about the human skeleton. Personal anecdotes and experience allow our brain to shape the world around us.

One of the negatives about the book is the constant change in perspectives. At times, within one page, there were almost three or four narratives. The sudden narrative changes make it very difficult to follow. The length of the book is also another concern. The numerous narrations resulted in a very long and lengthy book. The different narration is also the best of part of the book. The oral history provides a new way to look at history and a new way to learn.

The theory of constructivism calls for learning based on a leaner’s active participation in the learning process. Kisseloff wants the reader to learn about the rich history of Manhattan. In order to do that, he depends on third party narrations and personal anecdotes. These anecdotes incite the reader to formulate their own history of Manhattan.

In an Upper West Side story, Bullets Bressan talks about the Sheffield Farms. As a kid, Bressan went to the farm to get milk and he always loved the cream that collected at the top of the milk bottle. In the Northern Manhattan story, William Exton recounts his fight to preserve the Inwood Hill Park. Exton served as the trustee and treasurer of the Municipals Arts Society and fought to prevent a road through Inwood Hill Park. In the East Side story, Vinnie Caslan recounts playing stickball in the sidewalks. He was afraid to play in the sidewalks because of the police. The cop knew his parents and he would tell his parents if he did anything wrong.

These three stories are the best examples of how the book shapes the way the reader think. Bressan’s story reminded me of the farms that used to be in Manhattan. Exton’s story reminded me of the parks and nature that is so dear to Manhattan. Finally, Caslan’s story reminded me of the friendliness and closeness in our communities. Although these stories do not directly provide the history of Manhattan, they give us a quick look into how people lived once upon a time.