Books
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890) http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/139827
Perhaps the most famous of all the muckraking novels of the early 20th century Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives documents the dismal living conditions of New York’s underbelly. He documents the Irish, the Germans, the Jews, the Bohemians, the Italians, everybody who trudges through life in NYC. He exposes the extraordinary rent that slumlords collect and the mistreatment of nonnative speakers. His camera brings light to the disgusting dark squalor of New York slums and because of him many social reforms were made to help those who cannot help themselves.
Piri Thomas, Down These Mean Streets (1967) http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/807671925
Piri Thomas weaves an enthralling tale of personal failure and redemption in his memoir Mean Streets. Born to a black father and Puerto Rican mother, Piri doesn’t know who he is. Throughout his life he struggles to find out where he belongs and who to stay with. He knows for sure that he’s not white, but he fights with the idea of being black. In his path to enlightenment Piri hangs out with all sorts of people, and gets into a lot of trouble. The author does pull through in the end and walks upon the straight and narrow. This story is a great narrative of the conflicts of language, racial, and religious identity, and community.
Chang-Rae Lee, Native Speaker (1995) http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/31012779
Spy Henry Park is a man with a talent. He can blend in; he can change who he is to suit the occasion. In order to get dirt on high-up people this is necessary. But at what cost? Henry is so used to being other people he barely knows who he is? Is he Korean, or American? Is he a workaholic or a family man? Can he be trusted? Can he love? This story portrays the concepts of language, cultural identity, culture clash, personal identity and trust. This book is deep and a real page-turner.
Movies
General Note: Each of these movies display New York City as a character. In other words, these films give off a feeling of what New York was like in their respective time periods.
Martin Scorsese, Gangs of New York (2002) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0217505/
Taking place in the mid-1800s, during the time of the American Civil War, Gangs of New York depicts an impoverished area at the time known as the Five Points (located on our map). It was an area containing tenements, gangs, disease, and crime. One of the most notable “hidden histories” that the movie portrays is the New York City draft riots (July 13 to July 16, 1863).
Martin Scorsese, The Age of Innocence (1993) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106226/
The Age of Innocence takes place in 1870s Manhattan. It takes place approximately around the same time as Gangs of New York, yet the New York you see in this movie compared to Gangs of New York could not be more different. This film displays an excellent picture of the aristocratic New York of the mid-1800s. The movie is packed full of elaborate clothing, fancy high-end delicacies, strict aristocratic customs, and so on. To get a further glimpse into this life style, visit the Merchant’s House Museum (located on our map).
Joan Micklin Silver, Hester Street (1975) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073107/
Hester Street shows an interesting characteristic of New York immigrants. The film displays a major conflict that immigrants (the movie is specific to European Jews) in New York faced: should one hold on to his old customs and be forever dubbed as a stranger, or should he immerse himself into the new society and completely assimilate? These are real problems that immigrants had to face, and still do today. Additionally, the movie also very well displays the Jewish section of Lower Manhattan of the early 20th century. The Jewish streets were filled with children in dirty cloths running around, merchants on the street trying to make a quick buck, and beaten up buildings. Also, the film very well portrays the tiny overcrowded apartments. For further information about this topic, check out Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (specifically his chapter titled “Jewtown” .
Martin Scorsese, Mean Streets (1973) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070379/
Set in 1970s New York, Scorsese’s Mean Streets is about a young mafia up-and-comer named Charlie and his friend Johnny Boy. Johnny Boy is a wild-card who never listens to reason or others concerns. Charlie is a man who is torn between helping his friend and keeping his community, the mafia, cohesive and friendly. The further on into the movie Johnny keeps digging himself deeper and Charlie is standing over him trying to give him a ladder. This film is remarkable for its ability to capture problems in a community, and how to deal with a bad egg, when no one agrees on what to do.
Elia Kazan, On the Waterfront (1954) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047296/
Brando and Kazan team up again for another masterpiece: On the Waterfront. Instead of New Orleans, their venue is New York in a period where longshoremen played an integral role in NYC’s economy. And where there are many laborers there are unions. Because unions are powerful they sometimes attract the wrong people. That’s just the case in this movie, where gangster Johnny Friendly takes over the workers’ local to get a big cut of the dues. Everyone who talks is dealt with. In fact the workers have a phrase for how they act, ‘deaf and dumb.’ But one whacking goes too far and the community tries to fight the corruption of the mob. After watching the movie the audience will have have a greater understanding of the impact an individual can make by standing up for what he believes in.
Jim Sheridan, In America (2002) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298845/
Set in the 1980s In America follows an Irish family who illegally enter the United States to make a better life for themselves. They are escaping emotional turmoil at home and are very poor and have no family or connections in New York. Life is very hard for them at first, they move in to a dirt cheap ramshackle apartment whose building is overrun with drug addicts and other dangerous types. But they make the best of it and better their lives through friendship and hard work. While the plot devices in this movie are a little to good to be true or believable this story is based on a real one, and will leave the viewer in a profound state of catharsis.
Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing (1989) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097216/
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing is one of those movies where the audience feels the conflict boiling the blood in their veins. And that’s because it takes place on the hottest day of the year in a Brooklyn neighborhood. This area is populated mostly by blacks with some Hispanics, a Korean family, and an Italian family. The heat puts everyone on edge, and when people are upset they can lose their minds. Each race starts hating on other races and the scorcher pushes them closer and closer to some irrevocable racial conflict. Do the characters do the right thing? You decide.
Web Sites
http://www.vny.cuny.edu/resources.html
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