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Reviews
| The Tenants of East Harlem. By Russell Leigh Sharman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. xiv + 243 pp. Map, photos, notes, bibliography, and index. $50.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).
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Love cannot be an adequate substitute for analysis. It is a necessary component for productive reflection, but the critical nature of scholarly inquiry often avoids the emotions of value and appreciation. Russell Sharman brings the reader to the intersection of reason and intuition in The Tenants of East Harlem. He asserts his desire to avoid the lofty abstractions of academic theory in crafting a work for a popular audience in the introduction and then lets his subjects take center stage. Each person represents a different ethnic community within the neighborhood and indirectly provides a chronological organization of immigrant succession through the second half of the twentieth century. |
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Sharman first sketches out a description of the physical geography of East Harlem. He is the scholarly outsider, but also an interested citizen. After brief contextual discussions of his subjects, Sharman's chapters focus on extended conversations with Pete, José, Lucille, Maria, Mohamed, and Si Zhi before a concluding statement on his own identity among and between them. Pete illustrates the experience of Italian Americans—aging, cynical, and nostalgic. José reveals the experience of Puerto Ricans as simultaneously that of immigrant outsiders, cultural pioneers, and racial minorities. Lucille focuses on the marginalization of the African American community as the politics of integration and economics of deindustrialization transformed the city. Maria reflects on the recent experiences of Mexican immigrants and the complexity of Chicano family and work life. Mohamed presents the diversity of the West African immigrant community and the ways transnational communities operate through New York City. Si Zhi explains the hope and despair of Chinese immigrants who fled repression after Tiananmen Square but also worry about the unbounded freedoms of their children in the United States. |
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These stories provide the foundation for numerous additional inquiries into the nature and character of American urban neighborhoods at the start of the twenty-first century. The testimonies are rich with implicit meanings about negotiating family, consumer, religious, and sexual relationships in a changing and challenging environment. Elliot Liebow wrote in Tell Them Who I Am: The Lives of Homeless Women (New York, 1993): "What sets these homeless women apart is that, sane, crazy, or physically disabled, they are all engaged in a titanic struggle to remain human in an unremittingly dehumanizing environment" (p. 222). The Tenants of East Harlem shows the reader a less intense array of struggles to explore humanity rather than maintain it. The people in Sharman's study face challenges that contain their own power and morality, yet the writing often prevents the reader from accessing the joys and sufferings that the subjects describe. |
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The result is a book that is pleasant and interesting but uncritical. Whereas Liebow's works became classics because they captured both the individual perspectives and collective worldviews by balancing the passionate voices of the subjects with the restrained analysis of the author, Sharman's friendship with his subjects undermines both the duende—"A mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain" [Federico Garcia Lorca, Norman Thomas di Giovanni, and Christopher Maurer, In Search of Duende (New York, 1998), p. 7]—of their voices and the insightful appreciation of the neighborhood he wants to convey. The Tenants of East Harlem provides a revealing glimpse of the web of intersections that compose the neighborhood, but Sharman does not develop the connections to the rest of Manhattan or New York City. These people, families, organizations, and institutions form an island with very little spatial or cultural context. It is a good book for early undergraduate students, advanced high school students, or readers interested in urban neighborhoods or immigrant experiences.
Walter Greason
Ursinus College
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