Moving Sidewalk

This is a late post, but Kirk Semple’s Feb. 4 Times story about the local Haitian community is worth reading. Haitians are the ninth-largest immigrant group in New York City, but they’re less clustered than some other groups, with more of a suburban presence (there’s a graphic on the site comparing the 1980 and 2008 populations). Some hope the devastating earthquake “will bring them more coherence and clout, and deepen an involvement with their homeland that has weakened with each new generation.”

El Museo del Barrio celebrates Opening Day of its renovated space on Saturday, Oct. 17, as it kicks off its 40th-anniversary celebrations with an all-day open house. This first part of the renovation includes a new gallery, courtyard, and café.

Exhibits include Voces y Visiones, more than 100 works by Latino, Caribbean, and Latin American artists, and Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis, which Holland Cotter reviews in today’s Times.

The museum is at 1230 Fifth Ave, at 104th St (right by the Museum of the City of New York).

It’s Italian Heritage Month (thanks to Cristoforo Columbo), and the Museum of the City of New York is screening Pane Amaro, a documentary produced by RAI, Italy’s public TV, about the Italian American immigrant experience from 1880 through World War II. The film doesn’t shy away from the hostility Italian immigrants faced—including a mass lynching in New Orleans in 1891. There’s a lot more to the history than portrayals of Italian Americans as mobsters.

Producers Gianfranco Norelli and Suma Kurien will be on hand for a Q&A after the screening, which is at 3 pm Saturday, Oct. 17. Free with museum admission.

Why so many posts about Chinese Americans? It just worked out that way.

On the Times City Room blog, Peter Kwong of Hunter College has been answering questions about the gentrification of Chinatown. In discussing “the decline of New York’s Chinatown as a viable living, working and shopping area for new immigrants,” he cites the closing of the garment factories (despite paying low wages, they can’t compete with China) and the rise of real estate speculation. He worries that Chinatown will turn into “an ethnic theme park without its ethnic population.” This has certainly happened to some Italian American neighborhoods. Chinatown also suffered quite a bit from the events of 9/11, but he says the process started before then.

If you haven’t noticed any gentrification, he points out what to look for, and in a second round of discussion he gives a brief overview of the neighborhood’s history. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the patterns of immigrant settlement and evolution of neighborhoods.

Steuben Parade, September 2007

This year’s Steuben Day Parade is at noon Saturday on Fifth Avenue, from 67th to 86th St.

Papers for Chinese laborer Goon Bow; photo from Brooklyn Historical Society

Finally, I made it to the Brooklyn Historical Society’s exhibit Living and Learning: Chinese Immigration, Restriction & Community in Brooklyn, 1850 to Present, which, happily, has been extended to October 18.

Through a series of panels with photos and a couple of census books, the exhibit discusses the reception that Chinese immigrants found in New York in the late 19th century and how they began to make Brooklyn a home. The caricatures are appalling, but they’re not only directed at the Chinese; apparently, there was something of an Irish resistance to Chinese immigration, and defenders of the Chinese did not hesitate to stereotype the Irish in comparison. And Chinese laundries not only offered economic competition but carried a more insidious threat: if men did laundry—women’s work—the sacred concept of manliness was in danger.

Overall I found it a very interesting introduction to the history of Chinese immigration to New York, with a rare focus on street-level Brooklyn and the churches and businesses that were part of Chinese life at the time.

The exhibit also takes a brief look at Sunset Park today, and on the historical society’s website you can download the oral histories of some Chinese-American residents of Sunset Park.

If you’re counting the days until the grand opening of the Museum of Chinese in America on Sept. 22, definitely pay a visit to the BHS.

What I found most notable about Paraíso Travel, now showing at the Quad Cinema on 13th Street in Manhattan, is that it is not the story of a desperate immigrant trying to escape debilitating poverty. Marlon is simply addled with desire for the young and highly manipulative Reina, who lures him from his middle-class home in Medellín to accompany her to the United States. In fact, Reina’s needs are beyond anything Marlon can imagine, but that’s not what the story is about. Marlon gets lost upon arrival and wants only to find her again.

The film, directed by Simon Brand, is a colorful portrait of some of the Colombian community in Jackson Heights and, in general, of the ways people find to get by. The supporting cast has a lot of personality, and there’s plenty of music and sex. I only wish Marlon himself were more interesting; while I sympathized with his predicament, I never really grew to like him.

More on Chinese Americans: Alison Leigh Cowan in the Times writes about the strategies of hopeful Chinese immigrants after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred most unskilled laborers from China. Immigrants would use study aids to pretend that they were the children of Chinese who were legal residents—or just to make sure they could prove who they actually were. Desperation to get into the United States is nothing new.

You can look at the notebook pages through the Times link above; it even includes a map of the family’s ancestral village. For more on this topic, one commenter recommends the book Paper Families by Estelle T. Lau.