Bengali Harlem and the lost histories of South Asian America / Vivek Bald.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bald, Vivek.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ḥaidar, Dādā Amīr, 1900-1989.

Ḥaidar, Dādā Amīr.

South Asian Americans--History--20th century.

South Asian Americans.

South Asian Americans--Cultural assimilation.

Muslims--United States--History--20th century.

Muslims.

Working class--United States--History--20th century.

Working class.

United States--Race relations--History--20th century.

United States.

Harlem (New York, N.Y.)--Race relations--History--20th century.

Harlem (New York, N.Y.).

United States--Emigration and immigration--History--20th century.

South Asia--Emigration and immigration--History--20th century.

South Asia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 294 p., [11] p. of plates ) ill., maps

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Introduction : lost in migration

Out of the East and into the South

Between "Hindoo" and "Negro"

From ships' holds to factory floors

The travels and transformations of Amir Haider Khan

Bengali Harlem

The life and times of a multiracial community

Conclusion : lost futures.

Notes:

Formerly CIP.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-275) and index.

ISBN:

9780674070400

0674070402

9780674067578

0674067576

OCLC:

1013937793