 | |
| Author | Vivek Bald |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical non-fiction |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Publication date | January 2013 [1] |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 294 |
| ISBN | 978-0-674-06666-3 |
Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America is a non-fiction book by American academic and filmmaker Vivek Bald about the historical migration of Bengali people from South Asia to the United States. [2]
Vivek Bald is an Associate Professor of Writing and Digital Media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a filmmaker. [3] [4]
The book examines the arrival of Bengali sellers in Harlem in the early part of the 20th century, and the establishment of a Bengali neighborhood in Harlem in the 1920s. The book also examines the arrival of Bengali Hindu settlers in Treme, New Orleans. [3] [5] The book was inspired by a Bengali man, a sailor from Bengal who settled in Harlem in the 1930s. The book examines passenger records and census papers to picture the life of early Bengali settlers and how they settled to largely African-American neighborhoods because of racial segregation then. [6]
Bald was selected for a Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship for 2017-18 based on this book. [7] The book has been called "intricately researched and exquisitely rendered," [8] and was described in the Huffington Post as a "brilliantly revelatory book." [9]
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and East 96th Street.
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (; was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company was the first movie company owned and controlled by black filmmakers, Micheaux is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, a prominent producer of race films, and has been described as "the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century". He produced both silent films and sound films.
Little Italy is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, known for its former Italian population. It is bounded on the west by Tribeca and Soho, on the south by Chinatown, on the east by the Bowery and Lower East Side, and on the north by Nolita.
Bardu Ali was an American jazz and R&B singer, guitarist, and promoter.
East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem, Finnish Harlem or El Barrio, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City, north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, Fifth Avenue to the west, and the East and Harlem Rivers to the east and north. Despite its name, it is generally not considered to be a part of Harlem proper, but it is one of the neighborhoods included in Greater Harlem.
Bangladeshi Americans are American citizens with Bangladeshi origin or descent. Bangladeshi Americans are predominantly Bengali Americans and are usually Bengali speaking Muslims with roots in Bangladesh. Since the early 1970s, Bangladeshi immigrants have arrived in significant numbers to become one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the U.S. New York City is home to two-thirds of the Bangladeshi American population. Meanwhile, Paterson, New Jersey; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Monroe Township, Middlesex County, New Jersey are also home to notable Bangladeshi communities.
Bengalis, also rendered as endonym Bangalee, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia. The population is divided between the sovereign country Bangladesh and the Indian regions of West Bengal, Tripura, Barak Valley, Goalpara, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and parts of Meghalaya, Manipur and Jharkhand. Most speak Bengali, a language from the Indo-Aryan language family. Sub-section 2 of Article 6 of the Constitution of Bangladesh states, "The people of Bangladesh shall be known as Bengalis as a nation and as Bangladeshis as citizens."
Amber Valley is an unincorporated community in northern Alberta, Canada, approximately 160 kilometres (99 mi) north of Edmonton. Its elevation is 608 m (1,995 ft). Originally named Pine Creek, Amber Valley was among several Alberta communities settled in the early 20th century by early Black immigrants to the province from Oklahoma and the Deep South of the United States. About 1,000 African Americans emigrated to Alberta from 1909-1911. Amber Valley is the location of the Obadiah Place provincial heritage site, a homestead of one of the first African-American settler families.
Since its founding in 1625 by Dutch traders as New Amsterdam, New York City has been a major destination for immigrants of many nationalities who have formed ethnic enclaves, neighborhoods dominated by one ethnicity. Freed African American slaves also moved to New York City in the Great Migration and the later Second Great Migration and formed ethnic enclaves. These neighborhoods are set apart from the main city by differences such as food, goods for sale, or even language. Ethnic enclaves provide inhabitants security in work and social opportunities, but limit economic opportunities, do not encourage the development of English speaking, and keep immigrants in their own culture.
Dada Amir Haider Khan was a communist activist of Pakistan, and revolutionary during the Indian independence movement.
Nelson Antonio Denis is an American attorney, author, film director, and former representative to the New York State Assembly. From 1997 through 2000, Denis represented New York's 68th Assembly district, which includes the East Harlem and Spanish Harlem neighborhoods, both highly populated by Latinos.
Barry Michael Cooper is a New York City-born American writer, producer and director, best known for his screenplays for the films New Jack City (1991), Sugar Hill (1994), and Above the Rim (1994), sometimes called his "Harlem Trilogy".
Founded in the 17th century as a Dutch outpost, Harlem developed into a farming village, a revolutionary battlefield, a resort town, a commuter town, a center of African-American culture, a ghetto, and a gentrified neighborhood.
Shahidun Nessa Rahman, commonly known by her pseudonym Shahida Rahman, is an English author, writer and publisher. She is best known as the author of Lascar.
Ali Riaz is a Bangladeshi American political scientist, writer, currently serving as the head of the Bangladesh Constitutional Reform Commission. He is a Distinguished Professor at Illinois State University where he joined in 2002. Most of his work deals with religion and politics, particularly on South Asian politics and political Islam. He has written extensively on Bangladeshi politics and madrasas in South Asia. He was the editor of Studies on Asia, a bi-annual journal of the Midwestern Conference on Asian Affairs (2010–2015). He was also a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at Washington DC during the Fall of 2013. He is a non-resident senior fellow with the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council.
Tejaswini Niranjana is an Indian professor, cultural theorist, translator and author. She is best known for her contribution to the fields of culture studies, gender studies, translation, and ethnomusicology. She is the daughter of Kannada playwright and novelist Niranjana and writer Anupama Niranjana. Her partner is Indian author and cultural theorist, Ashish Rajadhyaksha.
African Americans in San Francisco, California, composed just under 6% of the city's total population as of 2019 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, down from 13.4% in 1970. There are about 55,000 people of full or partial black ancestry living within the city. The community began with workers and entrepreneurs of the California Gold Rush in the 19th century, and in the early-to-mid 20th century, grew to include migrant workers with origins in the Southern United States, who worked as railroad workers or service people at shipyards. In the mid-20th century, the African American community in the Fillmore District earned the neighborhood the nickname the "Harlem of the West," referring to New York City's Harlem neighborhood, which is associated with African American culture.
Shah Abdul Majid Qureshi, also known by his daak naam Moina Miah, was an early British Bangladeshi restaurateur and social reformer. He is notable for being involved in the early politics of British Asians and pioneering social welfare work for the working-class diaspora in the United Kingdom. He claimed to be the first Sylheti to own a restaurant in the United Kingdom. One of his later restaurants, India Centre, often provided facilities and was a location where important meetings were held by the India League attracting the likes of Subhas Chandra Bose and V. K. Krishna Menon.
The Old Dhakaites are an Indo-Aryan cultural group viewed as the original inhabitants of Dhaka. They are sometimes referred to as simply Dhakaites or Dhakaiya. Their history dates back to the Mughal period with the migration of Bengali cultivators and North Indian merchants to the city. The Bengali cultivators came to be known as Kutti and they speak Dhakaiya Kutti, a dialect of Bengali and the North Indian merchants came to be known as Khoshbas and they speak Dhakaiya Urdu, a dialect of Urdu. There are sizeable populations in other parts of Bangladesh. They have been described as a wealthy but very closed-off community; evidently being a minority in their own hometown. It is said that some people living in Greater Dhaka are even unaware of the existence of an Urdu-speaking non-Bihari minority community although their presence dates back centuries.
Islam is the third most widely professed religion in New York City, after Christianity and Judaism. A 2018 study estimated that there are over 750,000 Muslims living in New York City, the largest population of Muslims by city in the United States. Approximately 9% of New York City residents are Muslim, constituting 22.3% of American Muslims, with 1.5 million Muslims in the greater New York metropolitan area, representing the largest metropolitan Muslim population in the Americas.—and the most ethnically diverse Muslim population of any city in the world.