King Kong on 4th Street
Subtitle: families and the violence of poverty on the Lower East Side
By: Jagna Wojcicka Sharff.
Series: Institutional structures of feeling
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Boulder, Colo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 258
Subjects: Family -- New York (State) -- New York; Hispanic American families -- New York (State) -- New York; Urban poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Sex role -- New York (State) -- New York; Kinship -- New York (State) -- New York; Lower East Side (New York, N.Y.) -- Social conditions; Lower East Side (New York, N.Y.) -- Economic conditions
Other titles: King Kong on Fourth Street
Description: This book chronicles an ethnographic team's involvement over a span of fifteen years with the people of a poor, largely Puerto Rican neighborhood in New York City. Jagna Sharff focuses on a group of families who live within a radius of a few blocks of her storefront office, especially the children who come first to interact with the team.

She contrasts her team's initial observations of how people grapple with daily life with the residents' expressed hopes and dreams in a community lacking jobs but rife with underground activities. Through lively and interconnected stories, she traces over time the fate of the neighborhood and the outcomes for individual children and adults during an era when the local and national policy of the war on poverty was transmuted into a war against the poor.

The book's lyrical, cinematically vivid style makes it appealing both for college social science courses and for the general public.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-243) and index.