Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America

Vivek Bald

Published by Harvard University Press 2012

Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America

Vivek Bald

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674067578

Overview
Contents

About this book

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’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.

Author / Editor information

Vivek Bald is Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the director of three documentary films.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Author’s Note Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction Lost in Migration Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Out of the East and into the South Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
2. Between Hindoo and Negro Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
3. From Ships’ Holds to Factory Floors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
4. The Travels and Transformations of Amir Haider Khan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
5. Bengali Harlem Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	160
6. The Life and Times of a Multiracial Community Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Conclusion: Lost Futures Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: Academics, Students, Libraries, Institutes
Pages
- Main content: 268
Illustrations
- Other: 15 halftones, 2 maps, 4 tables

eBook

Published: January 7, 2013
ISBN: 9780674067578