{"id":25586,"date":"2012-09-25T21:08:54","date_gmt":"2012-09-25T21:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=25586"},"modified":"2017-04-19T16:16:24","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T16:16:24","slug":"bengali-harlem-and-the-lost-histories-of-south-asian-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=25586","title":{"rendered":"Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Harvard University Press<\/a>
\n2012-11-19
\n320 pages
\n6-1\/8 x 9-1\/4 inches
\n15 halftones, 2 maps, 4 tables
\nHardcover ISBN: 9780674066663<\/p>\n

Vivek Bald<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Media
\nMassachusetts Institute of Technology<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the final years of the nineteenth century, small groups of Muslim peddlers arrived at Ellis Island<\/a> every summer, bags heavy with embroidered silks from their home villages in Bengal<\/a>. The American demand for \u201cOriental goods\u201d took these migrants on a curious path, from New Jersey\u2019s<\/a> beach boardwalks into the heart of the segregated South<\/a>. Two decades later, hundreds of Indian Muslim seamen began jumping ship in New York<\/a> and Baltimore<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

The stories of these early working-class migrants vividly contrast with our typical understanding of immigration. Vivek Bald\u2019s 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\u2019s most iconic neighborhoods of color, from Trem\u00e9 in New Orleans<\/a> to Detroit\u2019s Black Bottom<\/a>, from West Baltimore<\/a> to Harlem<\/a>. Many started families with Creole, Puerto Rican, and African American women.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As steel and auto workers in the Midwest, as traders in the South, and as halal<\/a> hot dog vendors on 125th Street<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

For more information, visit the Bengali Harlem website here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n