Slumming in New York
Subtitle: From the Waterfront to Mythic Harlem
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: July 27, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9780252031946
Subjects: Other prose: from c 1900 -; American - African American; American - African American & Black; United States - 19th Century; Literary Criticism & Collections / African-American & Black; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; 19th century; 20th century; American fiction; History and criticism; New York; New York (State)
Description: This remarkable exploration of the underbelly of New York City life from 1880 to 1930 takes readers through the city's inexhaustible variety of distinctive neighborhood cultures. Slumming in New York shows how the city's rich and poor, foreign-born and native-born, competed for a voice from such diverse vantage points as the East Side waterfront, the Bowery, the Tenderloin's "black bohemia," the Jewish Lower East Side, and mythic Harlem. Investigating a wide range of New York "slumming" narratives in which mainstream outsiders write about marginalized urban insiders, Robert M. Dowling shows how literary works transformed moral threats into cultural treasures.