This weeks’ readings were by far the most interesting because of the first person point of view and narrative style of writing. Having a personal narrative story is so much more informative in an entertaining way rather than just plain facts and trends/changes about immigration. I greatly enjoyed reading Piri Thomas’s account the most because of how very descriptive and realistic the biography was.

As a response to Rebeccas question, I also agree that Orsi is a product of his environment. He was obviously just trying to fit in and and try to become an “insider.” Having and living up to a certain “reputation” is what formed the sense of community and the idea of a home that became very important and very close to his corazon.

A major trend that was in all of the readings was the idea of a home and one’s community. Like the others have said, it is highly unlikely to find such a community described in the reading today. Personally, I do not know my neighbors as well and I’m pretty sure that they would not support me like Ms. Washington did for Piri; they could care less about what is going on in my life.

This sense of community is what ties the individual back to his hometown, despite how poverty-stricken or unstable life might have been. This sense of community is the reason why immigrants formed “territories” or “blocks” dedicated to one ethnic groups. Although, life for the immigrants wasn’t what they expected of a better and satisfying life in New York, the sense of community and the love of the neighbors/the members of the community is what made an immigrants’ life worth reminiscing over.

Overall, the one quote that summarizes this and came to my mind after the reading is the one mentioned by Alexandra “you can take the soul out of Harlem, but you can never take Harlem out of the soul.”

Lastly, Maryam- WOW. That was truly amazing.

I just have to say, WOW Maryam! Awesome poem! Not only did it reflect Orsi’s commentary, but it also reflected Piri’s feelings and their response to one another’s experience (Along with your own response as well).

It was pretty intriguing to explore two different aspects on immigration life in the U.S, particularly New York City. The concept of a neighborhood has definitely changed over the years. As Greg and William mentioned, such a close-knit community is hard to find nowadays. People have less time to interact with their neighbors and become close with them as a result of working one or two jobs. However, during Piri’s time everyone on one block acted like one, having each others backs at all times. Of course they had poverty issues that we don’t have to deal as much with today but nonetheless a community was a community. For instance when Miss Washington stood up for Piri it represented a member of his community standing up for another member. We rarely see this happening today.

Towards the beginning of the class, Dr.Vellon asked us why did people reminisce about their lives as new immigrants when it was filled with poverty and horrible conditions. While doing the readings I got a sense of why these people appreciated their situation even though it wasn’t so ideal. For instance, Piri saw his father working hard day and night as a child and he grew an appreciation towards the diligence that his father showed. Additionally, he made close friends in his Puerto Rican neighborhood that acted like a pack of brothers. For Piri this was what his life was based on, his friends and family. When people look back they realize the beautiful relationships they made during those hard times with people that were going through the same thing. Today we live in a modern world where we barely know what our neighbor looks like.

As many people have already mentioned, the changing phases of New York City is inevitable. As we saw in our walking tour, there were a variety of cultures being introduced of that neighborhood. Along with the dominant Puerto Rican community, we also saw some Mexican pride in a few blocks. Immigrants are constantly coming to New York City for the hope of a better standard of living. Time can only tell what our current neighborhoods will look like in a matter of a few decades, years, or even months as this immigrant trend keeps continuing.

East Harlem is a culturally diverse neighborhood, which is what New York City in general is known for. East Harlem contains many different groups of people, to name the ones that we had read, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, African Americans, West Africans, and so on. From Tenants of East Harlem, it seems that the immigrants came to East Harlem to have a better life for their families, which is a similar story that many immigrants generally share. They call this place home, even Maria and Mohamed, who had no intention of staying in New York for long but still live here. Jose and Lucille had lived in Harlem for so long that they couldn’t imagine themselves anywhere else and became heavily involved in their community. Even Piri Thomas’ experiences could not change the fact that he loved his Spanish Harlem.

They felt a connection to Harlem partly because they thought back to their childhood with nostalgia. Jose always thought fondly of the DeWitt Clinton Houses and wishes that he was still living there. Lucille goes down the streets of her old block and is able to identify important places for her, such as where she lived, even though they may have torn down the building. Piri Thomas is attached to Spanish Harlem and always returned there whenever he could. It was also a central place of political and social change. Like Shirley mentions, thinking about changes in my own neighborhood can bring apprehension, I guess because of uncertainty. I have lived in my neighborhood my entire life and thinking about more changes can be unsettling because of how familar I am with the environment.

One detail that I noticed throughout the readings, especially in The Tenants of East Harlem, was that there was a division between nationalities and ethnic groups in East Harlem. Most of the people were able to identify where their neighborhood began and eneded. Lucille remembered how, when she walked to the Jefferson Park pool, she noticed that the neighborhood changed. They were concerned when they crossed the threshold of their areas, like Jose’s mother, who was fretting about this. Why were there divisions? Probably because, like mentioned previously, the immigrants clustered together with people that they were familiar with. There were clashes, like those between the Puerto Ricans and the Italians. I thought that Maryam’s poem was awesome and addressed the fact of how different cultures met. While both Orsi and Thomas were talking about the same neighborhood, they had different views of it.

The readings from this week were absolutely my favorite so far.  As everyone’s been saying, the immigrants; the people, are what make up a certain community.  I loved this week’s readings because of the fact that they focused on personal experiences and personal stories instead of neutral facts describing the general situations of community life.  I think it’s much more meaningful when you hear personal stories and can establish a personal connection.

I feel so bad for Piri Thomas- he had such a hard life. And of course I’m not saying he’s a saint or anything, but he definitely wasn’t a bad person, he was just a product of his environment.  (So Rebecca, to answer your question, I agree with ToniAnn- I think he was a product of his environment).  He had a hard family life (his mom died, his bad relationship with his father and being thrown out), which led to him living on the streets.  Of course once he was out on the streets he got caught up in his environment and one of the consequences was getting addicted to heroin, which aside from being unhealthy, also used up all his money and caused him to make bad decisions in order to get more money.  Although he quit heroin at this point, I think the poverty inflicted by heroin was one of the major factors that caused him to turn to robbery for quick and easy cash.  You could tell he wasn’t a bad person because he felt terrible when he beat up the old man and you could tell he regretted it.

One of the things that was the most frustrating for me was when he knocked up that girl and had to give up school to come back and provide for her and the baby.  He was so close to getting out!!! He was on the path to go to school and get a job and turn his life around, but instead he was pulled back into the streets because of some stupid move.

And when Piri was in jail and the riot was happening and all the prisoners had to make a decision-join the riot, or lose their pride/reputation by going back to their cell, I was happy that Piri hesitated.  I really thought he would resist and go back ot his cell so he could make parole.   It would be stupid to spend another two years in jail for a pointless riot just to save face.  Luckily the guards took him to his room before he could do something stupid and join the riot, which he would have done had they not stopped him.

He seemed to learn his lesson and he walked away from a fight with the barber in order to stay on good behavior to make parole.  It’s just not worth it- who cares if you save face by fighting?  That one punch will cause you two years in jail.  Don’t be an idiot Piri.

It was also hard to see his struggle when he got out of jail- when he got out of jail (and even some points when he was still in jail), he kept saying how he wanted to go to school and better himself and make his mother proud, but when he got out he started falling into the same routine again- smoking, drinking, sleeping with random women.  Even though he didn’t like the person who he became (by reverting back to his old ways), he just couldn’t change and be the person he wanted to be.  It was really frustrating, but it wasn’t totally his fault- I really believe he was a product of his environment and it was hard to fight that.

Maryam- your rhyme was awesome.   I really liked it.  Alex– Nice touch putting in a picture from out East Harlem walking tour.

Something that has always hurt my heart every time I come across it in a reading is the fact that so many immigrants arriving here have the image of an “earthly paradise,” or a city paved in gold when they think of New York City. Then they step off the boat (or the plane these days) and see that this mythical city is just a gray, drab setting. I was shocked that even my own mother (a VERY pessimistic woman) had the exact same image of a gold city in her head before arriving. Just like the immigrants in Orsi’s book (and many of the other readings before this) she saw old friends and neighbors return, richer than ever, and she believed that you could literally pull gold off of a tree. It just hurts to imagine how crushed people must have been once they see gray instead of gold. I do honestly cry every time I’m forced to read something like that.

Piri Thomas’s autobiography gives us that real first person point of view that all of our other readings lacked. Of course, the authors of the other books go to great lengths to illustrate and recreate these scenes for us, but Thomas’s honest, simple narration is something we really haven’t seen in this class yet. In response to Rebecca, I think that Piri was a criminal as a result of his environment and his search for himself. Even today, I know plenty of kids who make “bad” moral choices (we’ll use the term “bad” to describe Piri’s choices for now) because they are still searching for their identity, something that is especially hard to find in a place like New York City, where everyone tries to assimilate despite the fact that everyone is still so different from one another. I had an old friend who made choices similar to Piri’s; and he recently told me something interesting that pertains to this. He came to New York from Pakistan, and he always got beat up (I believe it was because he spoke weird). And he said that he made all those choices because he always felt that he was getting beat up because he wasn’t GOOD ENOUGH. It’s no different than Piri’s story of facing the Italians and growing up based on these outer influences.  I really found Piri’s story inspiring, and I think that the fact that he came out of all of this a changed, stronger man has made all the difference.

Something that I found interesting in Sharman’s reading was Maria’s fear of her own ethnic group. “As more Mexicans crowd the tenements, her fears turn as much to them as to ethnic outsiders… “With Mexicans, there are more conflicts, with other races or even among themselves” (131). Normally, the immigrant fears the other ethnicity and clings to their own. This was a stark contrast to everything else that we’ve ever read, where the mentality is “We good, they bad.”

The longer a person remains in a specific neighborhood setting, the less he is an observer, who merely views the community objectively, and the more he is an insider, who understands the dynamics of that neighborhood and partakes in its development. But even so, the experience of recording immigration of a New York City community is so specific to a certain time frame— while a one city may contain a large percentage of immigrants of a particular ethnicity, the numbers do not always stay constant. Instead, they fluctuate according to the amount of people who arrive and leave. And the existence of “Spanish Harlem” attests to the flow of different immigrants into a new community. Therefore, it is not only the actual numbers that change, but also the physical make-up of the current population. So while Jose and Lucille may get a better understanding of the growth of their community due to the amount of time they lived there, Maria and Mohammed get more of a flash of life once they arrive. Their minds have already developed to a certain degree, and they are capable of making judgments on East Harlem based on their previous knowledge and experience. Generalizing this scenario to the present, I think that immigrants who arrive as older children may have a greater appreciation of what New York has to offer but, at the same time, also come with a critical eye because they have in their minds what to compare life to—that is, a previous life in a distant country, devoid of similar opportunities and risks.

I found it interesting to focus on immigration and its implications from a child/adolescent’s point of view. Susan’s experience adapting to American culture, specifically the food industry, is very real. A child of immigrants or a child who is an immigrant can be exposed to two (or possibly more!) completely different cultures simultaneously. There is a struggle to reconcile the diversity, or perhaps completely forgo the old, and pursue the new. Unfortunately, sometimes, neither option works and the child grows up confused, misunderstood, and engaged in acts of physical violence and personal abuse. I found it amazing how environment can have such an enormous impact on one’s behavior, development, and attitudes.