Book Description
Ã, Ã, Ã, Born in Transylvania at the turn of the century, Bella Cohen Spewack arrived on the streets of New York's Lower East Side when she was three. At 22, while working as a reporter with her husband in Europe, she wrote this memoir of her early years, which she never chose to publish. The publication of
Streets more than 70 years later recovers a remarkable voice and revivifies a lost world.
Ã, Ã, Ã, With a sense of the telling anecdote, the young Bella describes the sights and sounds of her neighborhood, and introduces a wide array of people as her family moves annually to save rent or find a still cheaper apartment. Her mother works as a live-in domestic, then takes on sewing and eventually boarders, as well as a new and unfriendly husband. Bella's world also includes two younger brothers, one of whom needs constant nursing.
Ã, Ã, Ã, Streets includes the story of Bella's high school years-her mother was determined to make "a lady" of her daughter and would not allow her to work in a factory-and ends before she meets and marries Sam Spewack. At once street-smart and unsentimental Bella is a sturdy American hero who overcomes life's obstacles in a world that will later welcome her as a celebrated author.
Customer Reviews:
I love that book!.......2001-07-22
this is my favorite book. if anyone has similar taste to me then i highly recommend them to read it.
i'm going to describe it as a story of a girl growing into a women on the streets of the lower east side of manhattan. she tells of different jobs and the boarders that her and her mother board to help pay the rent. its very hard for me to describe becuase of 2 reasons 1) you can't describe it you have to read it 2)i read it a year ago.
i was getting so into reading it that i never wanted it to end. to last forever. so i tried to do so by reading a limit of pages each day. i live in NYC and by reading the book i had grown a stronger love for the city and thats another reason i loved the book. i also loved the stories she has of her childhood. the down fall of the book? well, it was and made me sad. it was kinda a depressing book. you now. like a heart-acher.
it was indeed a pleasure to read and in the future, if you do read it, i hope you enjoy.
thats my review! i hope i helped!
I love that book!.......2001-07-22
this is my favorite book. if anyone has similar taste to me then i highly recommend them to read it. i was getting so into reading it that i never wanted it to end. to last forever. so i tried to do so by reading a limit of pages each day. i live in NYC and by reading the book i had grown a stronger love for the city and thats another reason i loved the book. the down fall of the book? well, it was and made me sad. it was kinda a depressing book. you now. like a heart-acher.
it was indeed a pleasure to read and in the future, if you do read it, i hope you injoy.
thats my review! i hope i helped!
Recommended to students of Jewish history & women's studies........2000-04-04
Streets: Memoir Of The Lower East Side was written in 1922 and published for the first time in 1955. This remarkable memoir of a young Jewish girl's coming of age in the tenement slums of New York's Lower East Side is gritty, candid, vivid, engaging, sensitive, and streetsmart. Bella Spewack overcame obstacles of gender, background, and religious discriminations to succeed as a celebrated journalist, playwright, and screenwriter. Streets is highly recommended, articulate reading and will prove of special interest to students of American Jewish history, Women's Studies, and biographies reflecting the triumph of the human spirit over social and cultural barriers.
The early life of an unusual woman, with comedy and sadness.......1999-09-09
This is a coming of age story depicting the harrowing early life of an extraordinary talent. Told with an amazing eye for detail and a highly developed sense of humor, this is one of the most moving autobiographies I have read. Bella Spewack writes of her thirst for knowledge and determination. In later life Bella invented the Girl Scout cookie, became a noted journalist and wrote successful plays and movies. Streets tells of the difficult circumstances of her childhood.
Fascinating, historical review.......1999-08-06
This book was written by a very eloquent author in 1922. At 23years of age, she carefully details her struggles of growing up inpoverty on the lower east side of Manhattan. This is one of a few books that deals with the difficulties faced by immigrants of to New York around the turn of the century. Her battles are those of a poor, Jewish girl growing up without a father in tenement housing. I thouroughly recommend this book to Jews, feminists and historians.
Book Description
Life on the Lower East Side, the first monograph of Lepkoff’s works, highlights the lost neighborhood between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges from the Bowery to the East River. With over 170 beautifully reproduced duotone photographs and essays by Peter Dans and Suzanne Wasserman, the book reveals the dynamic community of Italians, Irish, Jews, Greeks, Spaniards, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, and African-Americans. Lepkoff’s images uncover a forgotten time and place and reveal how the Lower East Side has both stayed the same and changed forever.
An exhibition of the photographs presented in this book will be held at the Museum of the City of New York from October 2006.
Customer Reviews:
Life on the Lower East Side:Photographs by Rebecca Lepkoff, 1937-1950.......2007-01-11
This book is perfect for history/nostalgia/photography buffs.
The photographs are wonderful and sensitive of places, people and things in a neighborhood that is swiftly changing.
Life on the Lower East Side: Photographs by Rebecca Lepkoff, 1937-1950.......2007-01-10
This is a book of photographs one feels truthfully captures the atmosphere, the way of life, experienced by the people living on the Lower East Side during this period of time. The text is a bit difficult to read as it is not a very dark print but all in all the book is worthwhile for just the photographs alone.
The Lower East Side Lives.......2006-12-14
This is a beautiful book. The photographs are honest and compelling, and the writing is wonderful. My 13-year-old daughter and I especially loved reading about Peter Dans' childhood in a cold-water flat. I grew up loving the "All-of-a-Kind" books by Sydney Taylor, and in some ways, this reminded me of those beloved stories. Peter Dans is a sensitive writer who, like Sydney Taylor, is able to make you feel as if you're there, and care about the people -- in this case, himself as a young boy and his remarkable family, particularly his grandmother. I feel the loss of this neighborhood even though I've never been there. In these pages, with both authors' wonderful writing and the rich photography, the Lower East Side lives again, in all its vitality. The only thing I would change is to make the text type darker, so it would be easier on the eyes.
great photographs-disappointed in organization.......2006-10-26
The publishing of Lepkoff's beautiful photgraphs was long overdue and Peter Dans' parallel touching story gave them added life and unique history. As a student of Lower East Side History and as someone who grew up in Knickerbocker Village, I would have loved to find out their exact location, in the manner of Abbott's great work. The photos are only identified by grouping them in broad areas at the beginning of loosely organized chapters. I can take educated guesses on several of them, but that's all. Perhaps Lepkoff's notes were missing? I'm sure a gathering of some old-timers could have pin-pointed them. Nevertheless, I'm contacting my childhood friends to make sure they get a copy.
Book Description
Life on the Lower East Side was bustling. Immigrants from many European countries had come to make a better life for themselves and their families in the United States. But the wages they earned were so low that they could afford only the most basic accommodationsâtenements. Unfortunately, there were few laws protecting the residents of tenements, and landlords took advantage of this by allowing the buildings to become cramped and squalid. There was little the tenants could do; their only other choice was the street. Though most immigrants struggled in these buildings, many overcame a difficult start and saw generations after them move on to better apartments, homes, and lives. Raymond Bial reveals the first, challenging step in this process as he leads us on a tour of the sights and sounds of the Lower East Side, guiding us through the dark hallways, staircases, and rooms of the tenements.
Customer Reviews:
Superb book!!.......2002-12-13
I read this book while I was doing a research paper on immigrant women and their experiences in America and I was quite impressed by the amount of information it has. Unlike some books on this subject I've read, it has a nice flow to it and it reads well. I really liked the way the author organized it because it follows the immigrant women from the old country to America and very nicely describes their transition into Americans and the struggles they faced while doing this. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in this subject.
Average customer rating:
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Life on the Lower East Side (Picture the Past)
Jennifer Blizin Gillis
Manufacturer: Heinemann
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ASIN: 1403442878 |
Book Description
Imagine growing up on Orchard Street in 1916. If you were a member of the large Confino family you’d be living in 325 square feet of space. The only fresh air and natural light would come from the two windows in the front room. No heat, no water, no bathtub, no shower. Toilet in the hall.
The Confinos’ apartment is only one part of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, an extraordinary facility in New York City. The Museum has restored 97 Orchard Street to provide us with an opportunity to understand the immigrant experience shared by millions who have come to North America.
In text and with archival photos, Linda Granfield tells the story of four families, including the Confinos, who called 97 Orchard Street home, and provides information about the period, the history of the house, and the neighborhood, bringing to life conditions that were familiar to immigrants in many of North America’s big cities. The stories and archival materials are beautifully complemented by Arlene Alda’s sensitive photographs that evoke the hardship, the dignity, and the hope encompassed in 97 Orchard Street.
The book includes useful facts, information about the Museum and its efforts to help new immigrants who share similar experiences. Whether or not the reader can visit the Museum itself, this book is a valuable resource in understanding our own histories in North America.
Book Description
Manhattan's Lower East Side stands for Jewish experience in America. With the possible exception of African-Americans and Harlem, no ethnic group has been so thoroughly understood and imagined through a particular chunk of space. Despite the fact that most American Jews have never set foot there--and many come from families that did not immigrate through New York much less reside on Hester or Delancey Street--the Lower East Side is firm in their collective memory. Whether they have been there or not, people reminisce about the Lower East Side as the place where life pulsated, bread tasted better, relationships were richer, tradition thrived, and passions flared.
This was not always so. During the years now fondly recalled (1880-1930), the neighborhood was only occasionally called the Lower East Side. Though largely populated by Jews from Eastern Europe, it was not ethnically or even religiously homogenous. The tenements, grinding poverty, sweatshops, and packs of roaming children were considered the stuff of social work, not nostalgia and romance. To learn when and why this dark warren of pushcart-lined streets became an icon, Hasia Diner follows a wide trail of high and popular culture. She examines children's stories, novels, movies, museum exhibits, television shows, summer-camp reenactments, walking tours, consumer catalogues, and photos hung on deli walls far from Manhattan.
Diner finds that it was after World War II when the Lower East Side was enshrined as the place through which Jews passed from European oppression to the promised land of America. The space became sacred at a time when Jews were simultaneously absorbing the enormity of the Holocaust and finding acceptance and opportunity in an increasingly liberal United States. Particularly after 1960, the Lower East Side gave often secularized and suburban Jews a biblical, yet distinctly American story about who they were and how they got here.
Displaying the author's own fondness for the Lower East Side of story books, combined with a commitment to historical truth, Lower East Side Memories is an insightful account of one of our most famous neighborhoods and its power to shape identity.
Customer Reviews:
An exceptional, informative, highly recommended history.......2001-01-11
Hasia Diner is the Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University. In Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place In America, she recounts the history of Manhattan's Lower East Side in terms of its Jewish community, largely populated by immigrants from Eastern Europe. During the years 1880-1930 it was never ethnically (or even religiously) homogenous. It was a place of tenements, poverty, sweatshops, packs of roaming children, a dark warren of pushcart-lined streets and social work pioneering. Professor Diner surveys its popular culture, and the impact of the Lower East Side as an icon symbol upon such diverse venues as children's stories, novels, movies, museum exhibits, television shows, summer-camp reenactments, walking tours, consumer catalogues -- even photos hung on deli walls. After World War II the Lower East Side was enshrined as the portal through which Jews passed from European oppression into the promise of America. After 1960, the Lower East Side gave secularized and suburban Jews a culturally transmitted story of their origins and heritage. Lower East Side Memories is an exceptional, informative, highly recommended history of a community, a heritage, and a cultural identity arising from one of the most distinctive and unique neighborhoods in American twentieth century history.
Average customer rating:
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The Spirit of the Ghetto (Belknap Press)
Hutchins Hapgood
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
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81 Sheriff Street
Gertrude Ford
Manufacturer: F. Fell Publishers
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ASIN: 0811903435 |
Book Description
A portrait of Jewish life on New York City's Lower East Side at the turn of the century - how a unique community of immigrants met the challenge of starting a new life in America.
Books:
- Teaching Today's Health, Seventh Edition
- Ten Days to Self-Esteem
- The Bicycling Guide to Complete Bicycle Maintenance and Repair: For Road and Mountain Bikes(Expanded and Revised 5th Edition)
- The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown
- The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief
- The Dream Palaces of Hollywood's Golden Age
- The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day
- The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War
- The Glass Castle: A Memoir
- The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot
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The Lower East Side
