This book comprises the following papers discussing Caribbean life in New York City: (1) The Context of Caribbean Migration (Elsa M. Chaney); (2) The Caribbeanization of New York City and the Emergence of a Transnational Socio-Cultural System (Constance R. Sutton); (3) New York City and Its People: An Historical Perspective Up to World War II (David M. Reimers); (4) New York City and the New Caribbean Immigration: A Contextual Statement (Roy Simon Bryce-Laporte); (5) Where Caribbean Peoples Live in New York City (Dennis Conway and Ualthan Bigby); (6) Black Immigrant Women in "Brown Girl, Brownstones" (Paule Marshall); (7) Migration and West Indian Racial and Ethnic Consciousness (Constance R. Sutton and Susan Makiesky-Barrow); (8) West Indians in New York City and London: A Comparative Analysis (Nancy Foner); (9) West Indian Child Fostering: Its Role in Migrant Exchanges (Isa Maria Solo); (10) Garifuna Settlement in New York: A New Frontier (Nancie L. Gonzalez); (11) The Politics of Caribbeanization: Vincentians and Grenadians in New York (Linda G. Basch); (12) All in the Same Boat? Unity and Diversity in Haitian Organizing in New York (Nina Glick-Schiller, Josh DeWind, Marie Lucie Brutus, Carolle Charles, Georges Fouron, and Antoine Thomas); (13) Language and Identity: Haitians in New York City (Susan Buchanan Stafford); (14) Puerto Rican Language and Culture in New York City (Juan Flores, John Attinasi, and Pedro Pedraza, Jr.); (15) Dominican Family Networks and United States Immigration Policy: A Case Study (Vivian Garrison and Carol I. Weiss); (16) The Linkage between the Household and Workplace of Dominican Women in the U.S. (Patricia R. Pessar); (17) Formal and Informal Associations: Dominicans and Columbians in New York (Saskia Sassen-Koob); (18) A Comment on Dominican Ethnic Associations (Eugenia Georges); (19) Response to Comment (Saskia Sassen-Koob); (20) Afro-Caribbean Religions in New York City: The Case of Santeria (Steven Gregory); and (21) The Puerto Rican Parade and West Indian Carnival: Public Celebrations in New York City (Philip Kasinitz and Judith Freidenberg-Herbstein). Photographs, information about the contributors, and an index are included. (BJV)

Tammy L. Brown uses the life stories of Caribbean intellectuals as “windows” into the dynamic history of immigration to New York and the long battle for racial equality in modern America. The majority of the 150,000 black immigrants who arrived in the United States during the first-wave of Caribbean immigration to New York hailed from the English-speaking Caribbean—mainly Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad. Arriving at the height of the Industrial Revolution and a new era in black culture and progress, these black immigrants dreamed of a more prosperous future. However, northern-style Jim Crow hindered their upward social mobility. In response, Caribbean intellectuals delivered speeches and sermons, wrote poetry and novels, and created performance art pieces challenging the racism that impeded their success. Brown traces the influences of religion as revealed at Unitarian minister Ethelred Brown's Harlem Community Church and in Richard B. Moore's fiery speeches on Harlem street corners during the age of the “New Negro.” She investigates the role of performance art and Pearl Primus's declaration that “dance is a weapon for social change” during the long civil rights movement. Shirley Chisholm's advocacy for women and all working-class Americans in the House of Representatives and as a presidential candidate during the peak of the Feminist Movement moves the book into more overt politics. Novelist Paule Marshall's insistence that black immigrant women be seen and heard in the realm of American Arts and Letters at the advent of “multiculturalism” reveals the power of literature. The wide-ranging styles of Caribbean campaigns for social justice reflect the expansive imaginations and individual life stories of each intellectual Brown studies. In addition to deepening our understanding of the long battle for racial equality in America, these life stories reveal the powerful interplay between personal and public politics.

Since 1965, West Indians have been emigrating to the United States in record numbers, and to New York City in particular. Caribbean New York shows how the new immigration is reshaping American race relations and sheds much-needed light on factors that underlie some of the city's explosive racial confrontations. Philip Kasinitz examines how two forces--racial solidarity and ethnic distinctiveness--have helped to shape the identity of New York's West Indian community. He compares "new" (post-1965) immigrants with West Indians who arrived earlier in the century, and looks in detail at the economic, political, and cultural rules that Afro-Caribbean immigrants have played in the city during each period.

This collection of original essays draws on a variety of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and empirical data to explore the effects of West Indian migration and to develop analytic frameworks to examine it.

This collection explores the significance of New York City in children’s literature, stressing literary, political, and societal influences on writing for young people from the twentieth century to the present day. Contextualized in light of contemporary critical and cultural theory, the chapters examine the varying ways in which children’s literature has engaged with New York City as a city space, both in terms of (urban) realism and as an ‘idea’, such as the fantasy of the city as a place of opportunity, or other associations. The collection visits not only dominant themes, motifs, and tropes, but also the different narrative methods employed to tell readers about the history, function, physical structure, and conceptualization of New York City, acknowledging the shared or symbiotic relationship between literature and the city: just as literature can give imaginative ‘reality’ to the city, the city has the potential to shape the literary text. This book critically engages with most of the major forms and genres for children/young adults that dialogue with New York City, and considers such authors as Margaret Wise Brown, Felice Holman, E. L. Konigsburg, Maurice Sendak, J. D. Salinger, John Donovan, Shaun Tan, Elizabeth Enright, and Patti Smith.

"These superb essays illuminate the fascinating process of absorbing West Indian immigrants into New York City's multicultural but racially divided social fabric... They explore how gender, transnational networks, class, economic restructuring, and above all racial stereotyping have affected these black immigrants as they struggle for a better life and how their struggles have in turn influenced the contours of the larger society. The result is a model of multi-disciplinary analysis."—John Mollenkopf, co-author of Place Matters: A Metropolitics for the 21st Century "Islands in the City is a comprehensive collection of the recent findings of the foremost scholars in this field. The premier researchers on West Indians in New York City discuss migration from historical, statistical, theoretical, and experiential points of view. This volume will be used as a model for understanding migration in other areas and it will have importance beyond its field."—Wallace Zane, author of Journeys to the Spiritual Lands: The Natural History of a West Indian Religion "Nancy Foner has pulled together excellent essays by the leading scholars of the emerging study of West Indians in the United States. Islands in the City is a welcome book because of its informative essays on gender, occupation, and culture, to name but a few."—David Reimers, co-author of All the Nations Under Heaven: An Ethnic and Racial History of New York City "West Indians sit right at the center of the crucial divides of race, class, nationality, nativity, gender, generation, and identity. The insights of this book teach us much of what we need to know about our changing nation."—Jennifer Hochschild, author of Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation