Keeping your writing true to yourself - and your experiences

What does an American girl named Peggy who eats apples have in common with the Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie? Very little, as it turns out. On June 17th, Tenement Talks presented The Thing Around Your Neck with the award-winning writer in conversation with Tayari Jones. After the author read from her new compilation of short stories, Jones asked Adichie to recap on a TED Talk that she gave in July of 2009 about the dangers of the single story. According to Jones, the TED Talk received over 40,000 hits -- an impressive number of listeners.

Adichie said that when she was younger, she used to read children’s literature from England and the USA. As a child, she thought all stories had white people in them because the majority of main characters in the books she read were white. When she began writing, she wrote the kind of stories she read. Many of her characters had names like Peggy, were “white as snow, and ate apples.” Adichie said she had not tasted an apple until she was 13, and she had never seen snow. She finally found other books that reflected experiences similar to her own. Adichie commented that in many cases, middle-class children all over the developing world are exposed to literature that does not mirror their own lives. She commented on the importance of children being able to see themselves in the literature they read because it shows that their story is worthy enough to be written. Providing different perspectives in literature allows readers who are often underrepresented to have a voice and a story they can connect to personally.

Adichie also mentioned that listening to diverse points of view is imperative in understanding current events. She told an anecdote about a recent trip she took to Mexico. She had heard a great deal about Mexicans immigrating illegally to America on the news, but when she visited Mexico, she was surprised that the people were not like “the abject immigrants” she had heard about. Taking into consideration the multiple truths that exist in any scenario have helped deepen and elevate her writing.

Link to the TED Talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

- Posted by Alana

Preserving a Heritage. Connecting Us All.

As part of our series "400 Years of Immigration History" this month on Twitter, we've invited the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum to illuminate the history of the first Norwegian immigrants to come to America, aboard the Restauration in 1825. Follow the Twitter campaign at twitter.com/tenementmuseum.

The American immigrant experience in all its diversity can be dramatically and effectively viewed through the lens of Norwegian immigration.

The first Norwegian immigrants came to American for some of the same reasons that the English colonists did, and during the largest wave of Norwegian immigration, later in the 19th century, immigrants came for the same reasons that were typical of other immigrant groups at the time.

In October 1825 the sailing ship Restauration docked in New York Harbor. The small 54-foot vessel had set sail approximately 14 weeks before, probably on July 4, from Stavanger, Norway, with 50 passengers. They arrived with 51, for a baby was born during the crowded and challenging passage.

Like many early settlers, these were religious "dissenters," members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) and 'Haugeans,' a pietistic sect, seeking greater freedom of religious and political expression than they could find in Norway under the state-sanctioned Lutheran Church.

The flood of immigrants who followed from Norway later in the century — over 800,000 of them! — came for the worldlier reasons of land and opportunity. In this they were no different than many of those who came from other countries and, like some others, theirs was an exodus fueled in part by the rise and demise of the potato.

Norway is a rugged, rocky country riven with mountains and fjords. The introduction of the potato was a great relief to Norwegian farmers. The crop could grow almost anywhere, in different soils and conditions. With limited arable land, it was the custom for the eldest son to take over the family farm, leaving any other male siblings to find work elsewhere. Aided by years of peace and potatoes, the population of Norway grew in the decades preceding immigration, eventually leaving many men without employment and increasing the allure of building a new life in the New World.

Then, after helping to build the population up, the potato let the people of Norway down. The great potato famine was not isolated to Ireland. It affected much of Europe and hit Norway hard in 1859 and 1860. In 1861 a late frost killed the harvest. Food was scarce again and children grew sick and died. With little land, opportunity or food, restless, discontented eyes turned westward.

Norwegian immigrants made America their vesterheim, their western home. It was a home they shared with immigrants from many other countries, and together they helped build a nation. Each group wrote its own integral chapter in the American story. Today, we all still share that vesterheim and, at Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa, you can discover how our very uniqueness is what connects us all.

Early on in the immigration period, Norwegian-American leaders recognized the need to preserve cultural diversity if the nation was to thrive. O. E. Rølvaag made this an underlying theme of his novels and essays and, in 1895, the faculty and administrators of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, resolved that its museum would concentrate on collecting artifacts related to Norwegian immigration. Because of this extraordinary foresight, countless artifacts and documents have been preserved that together bring to life the Norwegian-American experience and in doing so help tell the amazing story of building one nation out of many.

That core collection begun at Luther College today has grown into an independent world-class museum and cultural center that is fully accredited by the American Association of Museums.

With over 24,000 artifacts and 16 historic buildings, this national treasure was called one of “ten great places in the nation to admire American folk art.” The lives of the people who settled America were truly as colorful as their folk art, and their stories speak through the objects they left behind. Come and see what they have to say to you -- and about you.

Vesterheim also preserves living traditions through events, tours to Norway, educational programs for children and adults, and classes in Norwegian culture and folk art, including rosemaling (decorative painting), woodcarving and woodworking, knifemaking, and textile arts.

Vesterheim's mission statement declares that the museum "embodies the living heritage of Norwegian immigrants to America. Sharing this cultural legacy can inspire people of all backgrounds to celebrate tradition."

For more information about everything that Vesterheim has to offer, check out our website, vesterheim.org.

- Special thanks to Charlie Langton at Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum for this post. All images courtesy Vesterheim.

It's hot out, you say?

Curious to know how tenement dwellers dealt with the soaring summer temperatures? Check out some images from the museum's photo database to find out how residents attempted to beat the heat.

1. To get some fresh air, families ventured to tenement rooftops to sleep.



2. Ventilation before the days of central air and electric fans. This air shaft is still the primary cooling system at 97 Orchard Street.



3. The water stream from fire hydrants provided some relief for children playing on the streets of the Lower East Side.



4. While adults attempted to cool off outdoors.

What kind of waterfront is it?

This July 4th, I rode my bike along the Brooklyn waterfront, through Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo and Red Hook. It’s an easy ride complete with bike lanes the entire way. I even waited in line for 45 minutes, with seemingly hundreds of other Brooklynites, to take the free ferry to Governor’s Island. As kids played in the new parks and we enjoyed our bottled water and ice cream, I thought about our recent Tenement Talk on Dark Harbor. I tried to envision the waterfront as the scene of the Brando movie, complete with longshoremen being murdered year after year. It felt inconceivable and outright laughable to consider this waterfront “dark” or dangerous.

When I returned that evening, I found Nathan Ward had written an OpEd in the New York Times on just that sentiment (though far more articulately).

http://nyti.ms/9YuwVH

- Posted by Amanda

The Fourth of July Picnic, Tenement-Style

Besides fireworks, the most important part of the Fourth of July for many is eating lots of delectable food straight off the grill. What did the residents of tenements eat on this holiday? And since the tenements were small and poorly ventilated in the summer heat, where would tenement-dwellers have eaten their Fourth of July cuisine?

In the hot summer weather, Lower East Side families tried to escape the tenements as often as they could, usually twice a month. Sunday was the most common day for a family outing, as it was typically the only day off from work. In years when the Fourth of July fell on a Sunday (like it does this year), families probably flocked to locations all over the city to have picnics. Scheutzen Park, which opened in New Jersey in 1875, attracted German immigrants from the Lower East Side’s Kleindeutschland neighborhood. They would walk to the trans-Hudson ferries that took them to New Jersey. Celtic Park, in Sunnyside, Queens, drew mainly Irish immigrants. (For more information on this topic, be sure to check out Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York by Kathy Peiss.)

Even on our nation’s birthday, it is likely that immigrants would have eaten foods that were familiar to them. Over time many of these foods have become part of mainstream American food culture. When we imagine summertime barbeques, we see potato salad, cole slaw, hamburgers, sauerkraut, sausage, Italian ice, and many other foods that immigrants introduced to the United States. And how could we forget the hot dog? German immigrants brought wienerwurst to the United States during the nineteenth century. Now an all-beef hotdog on a split-top bun is as American as apple pie. Also read 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement for more information about the food that tenement dwellers ate.

"Scraped ice seller on a hot day."
Collection of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum
http://photos.tenement.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;key=9845

Interestingly, immigrants are to thank for the legendary Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest. The story goes that four immigrants held a hot dog eating contest in 1916, the year Nathan’s Famous opened on Surf Avenue in Coney Island, to settle the dispute of who was the most patriotic of the bunch. The battle has been held every year on July 4th ever since and is open for anyone to participate.

In 1895, a trolley ride to Coney Island only cost five or ten cents. For families who could not afford travel costs, various fraternal and social organizations as well as political organizations and unions paid for mass outings and provided boats to take members to cooler locations. Coney Island drew an estimated 125,000 visitors on July 4, 1900. A New York Times article reported on the spectacle: “A sweltering host, seeking beer and breezes, descended upon Coney Island yesterday.” Apparently they argued with the train conductors about the extra 5 cent charge that applied to all holidays. Imagine being in the heat, desperate to escape the crowded tenements, and having to pay a higher price—it must have been brutal! The article continued, “A number of people living in the sweltering tenement districts in town remained by the ocean side all night to enjoy the cool air.” They were discovered after police, instructed to patrol the beach after 10 o’clock at night, found many people still lingering on the sand.

We wish all of our readers a cool and happy Fourth of July! (The Tenement Museum will be OPEN on Sunday July 4th so come for a visit if you want to celebrate our nation's heritage by recognizing some of the people who made it the America it is today...)

-posted by Devin

400 Years of Immigration History

If you're on Twitter, be sure to follow us this July as we tackle 400 years of American immigration history via 140 character tweets. Drawing on a timeline of immigration from JFK's A Nation of Immigrants, we'll share several tweets every day, starting from the beginning of the nation's history in the 17th century. In conjunction, we'll be posting longer explorations of this history on the blog, hopefully a few times a week. It'll be a great chance for our followers to learn more about America's immigrants, past and present, and hopefully engage each other on a variety of different topics.

You don't even need to have a Twitter account to read along - just find us at Twitter.com/tenementmuseum.

Fireworks on the Lower East Side

Yesterday we posted about how Lower East Side tenement dwellers may have celebrated the Fourth of July. You may be wondering—what about the fireworks? Here's my research on the history of fireworks in New York City.


An image of New York City lit up by fireworks, 1876.
Courtesy New York Public Library.

Firecrackers are nothing new to Fourth of July celebrations. Early settlers used them to celebrate the signing of Declaration of Independence in 1777, and by 1800 the first advertisements for fireworks were published.


An image from Harper's Weekly, July 4, 1857
Courtesy New York Public Library.

The opinion about fireworks has changed drastically over the years. In a July 1871 issue of Harper’s Weekly, one writer proclaimed, “there is no use in protesting against the good old orthodox fashion of celebrating the fourth of July with bonfires, cannon, guns, pistols, rockets, fire-crackers, snakes, Roman candles, fire-balloons, and every other possible contrivance for making a blaze and a noise.” In July of 1894, just 23 years later, an anti-fireworks Harper’s Weekly article stated that these “methods of celebration are obsolete and barbarous.”

Fireworks were very hazardous when not properly handled (as they are today). On July 5, 1900 the New York Times recounted the previous day’s celebrations, noting several injuries due to fireworks. One article detailed how three women were riding in a horse-driven coach at Coney Island when boys startled the horse with firecrackers. The scared animal ran crazily on Surf Avenue, causing pedestrians to run out of the way, until the coachman caught the horse’s bridle and calmed it down. Thankfully no one was injured.

Unfortunately, some sad events happened did on this day. Nine-year-old Henry Schneider of Second Avenue was holding a firecracker when it randomly went off. His right hand was shattered and he lost his right eye, as it was “blown out.” Another article reported how seven-year-old Gustave Rosmarin of 70 First Street fell out of a window and died instantly. He was shooting off firecrackers on the window ledge when some boys on the street threw more up at him to set off. He was frightened, lost his balance and fell. [Read more.]

In a 1910 Harper’s Weekly article titled “Our Murderous Patriotism,” the writer detailed the injuries and deaths on or shortly after the Fourth of July. Here are the recorded numbers from 1903-1909:

901 deaths from tetanus
630 deaths from other causes, including fireworks
114 cases of complete blindness
518 losses of one eye
406 losses of legs, hands or arms
1,420 losses of one or more fingers
30,606 other various injuries

A grand total of 34,603 were either injured or dead in seven years of Fourth of July celebrations. The article did not say whether these figures were specific to the New York area, so they are probably national statistics. In a July 5, 1912 New York Times article, one orator proclaimed that “on one Fourth of July there were more people killed in New York than there were in the Battle of Lexington.”

By 1911 New York City was starting to change the way the holiday was celebrated. In a June 1911 Harper’s Weekly edition, an article titled “A Sane Fourth makes a Happy Fourth” detailed how the celebration would run that year. It read, “To assure an old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration in New York City, with a minimum of fireworks and a maximum of patriotic enthusiasm,” the city would focus on the “procession of the nations.” The article claimed that “every nationality in the borough will be represented” by one family marching and holding their homeland’s flag. It is interesting to see how the definition of “old-fashioned” changed from 1871 (when they felt it patriotic to use all kinds of explosives) to 1911.


This ad would never be published today...
Courtesy New York Public Library

In the late 20th century fireworks become illegal in many counties and states, usually because of safety concerns. But in 2007 New York City repealed its ban of firecrackers, and people enjoyed seeing 300,000 set off in Chinatown’s Chatham Square. 

A happy and safe Fourth to all our readers!

-posted by Devin, with thanks to Mary Brown, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building and the New York Public Library Digital Gallery