Download or read book Overdue Returned and Missing the Changing Stories of Boston s Chinatown Branch Library written by Aditi Mehta (M.C.P.) and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1896, the Boston Public Library (BPL) opened a reading room on Tyler Street in between the South End and Chinatown. Since then, the library has disappeared and reappeared in various forms in Chinatown for different reasons. In 1956, the City of Boston demolished the Tyler Street Branch Library and since 2000, community groups in Chinatown have been advocating for their own branch of the BPL. This thesis explores why the Chinatown community does not have a library in 2010 and why the movement to reclaim one has gained momentum in the past ten years. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that the public library is a diagnostic window into society; the building, its operations, and the services it provides reflect the social, economic, and political contexts of time and place. This research demonstrates that the story of Boston's Chinatown Branch Library is more than just a historical account of a building or concept; it is actually a story about the development of a neighborhood, the preservation of culture and identity, as well as the growth of coalitions and divisions. At first, the addition or removal of the library in Chinatown was largely an extension of city policy, and eventually the presence of a library in the neighborhood became an extension of grassroots community movements. The history of the Chinatown Library mirrors the changing attitudes towards community development in the United States. While reflecting on this chronology, this thesis aims to answer the following questions: What does the library mean to the Chinatown community? What do these meanings tell about the needs of this neighborhood? And, what is the role of a branch library in fulfilling these needs in the contemporary context? The Chinatown Library means different things to its various providers and users. Through archival research and interviews with city officials, library administrators, community members, and other stakeholders, this thesis theorizes that Boston's Chinatown Library has six meanings: 1) Assimilation Processing Center; 2) Gathering Place; 3) Economic Training Ground; 4) Ethnic Identity Assertion; 5) Turf Defense; and 6) Political Clout Building. This research analyzes the decision-making processes of the BPL in 2010 and discusses how and why stakeholders should incorporate library meanings into these processes. Lastly, this thesis provides recommendations and insights for moving forward to all the major players of the Chinatown Library movement.
Download or read book The Boston Globe Index written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 1472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Many Meanings of Meilan written by Andrea Wang and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The little girl I was would have been thrilled to encounter Meilan... having found a character who embraces the complexity of being both Chinese and American, I would have been able to echo her words: 'I am not alone.'” —New York Times Book Review by Jean Kwok A family feud before the start of seventh grade propels Meilan from Boston's Chinatown to rural Ohio, where she must tap into her inner strength and sense of justice to make a new place for herself in this resonant debut. Meilan Hua's world is made up of a few key ingredients: her family's beloved matriarch, Nai Nai; the bakery her parents, aunts, and uncles own and run in Boston's Chinatown; and her favorite Chinese fairy tales. After Nai Nai passes, the family has a falling-out that sends Meilan, her parents, and her grieving grandfather on the road in search of a new home. They take a winding path across the country before landing in Redbud, Ohio. Everything in Redbud is the opposite of Chinatown, and Meilan's not quite sure who she is--being renamed at school only makes it worse. She decides she is many Meilans, each inspired by a different Chinese character with the same pronunciation as her name. Sometimes she is Mist, cooling and invisible; other times, she's Basket, carrying her parents' hopes and dreams and her guilt of not living up to them; and occasionally she is bright Blue, the way she feels around her new friend Logan. Meilan keeps her facets separate until an injustice at school shows her the power of bringing her many selves together. The Many Meanings of Meilan, written in stunning prose by Newbery Honor-winning author Andrea Wang, is an exploration of all the things it's possible to grieve, the injustices large and small that make us rage, and the peace that's unlocked when we learn to find home within ourselves.
Download or read book Imagine Boston 2030 written by City Of Boston and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, Boston is in a uniquely powerful position to make our city more affordable, equitable, connected, and resilient. We will seize this moment to guide our growth to support our dynamic economy, connect more residents to opportunity, create vibrant neighborhoods, and continue our legacy as a thriving waterfront city.Mayor Martin J. Walsh's Imagine Boston 2030 is the first citywide plan in more than 50 years. This vision was shaped by more than 15,000 Boston voices.
Download or read book Interpreter of Maladies written by Jhumpa Lahiri and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1999 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In nine stories imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, Lahiri charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.
Download or read book Rising written by Elizabeth Rush and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Pulitzer Prize Finalist, this powerful elegy for our disappearing coast “captures nature with precise words that almost amount to poetry” (The New York Times). Hailed as “the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing” (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love. With every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant—and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through these dramatic changes, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish. Rush sheds light on the unfolding crises through firsthand testimonials—a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago—woven together with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities. A Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal Best Book Of 2018 Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award A Chicago Tribune Top Ten Book of 2018
Download or read book A Likely Story written by Rosemary Mahoney and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1999-11-09 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in paperback--from the author of the acclaimed Whoredom in Kimmage, a moving, controversial, and supremely intelligent memoir of a bright and vulnerable teenager's hellish summer job. In 1978, Rosemary Mahoney, an aspiring young writer of seventeen, wrote her personal idol Lillian Hellman inquiring whether the famed woman of American letters might need domestic help for the summer. When Hellman responded affirmatively, Mahoney imagined an idyll on Martha's Vineyard of mentoring and friendship. But in reality Mahoney's summer unfolded into an exquisite and grueling exercise in humiliation at the hands of the acerbic Hellman and her retinue of celebrated acquaintances. By turns heartbreaking and uproariously funny, A Likely Story portrays the coming-of-age of a brilliant and troubled young woman--a universal tale of illusions shattered and an object lesson in the often misdirected search for heroes.
Download or read book The Image of the City written by Kevin Lynch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1964-06-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.
Download or read book Stay True written by Hua Hsu and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2023-09-12 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art, by the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu “This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” —Rachel Kushner, New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them. But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet. Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends—his memories—Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he’s been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.
Download or read book Doorways of Chicago written by Ronnie Frey and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-29 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is chock full of over 100 photographs of gorgeous doors, windows, architecture and more, seen by the eye of designer Ronnie Frey. Through this visual narrative, he will inspire you to find portals into other realms and meditative states. You will get a taste of the rich and diverse cultural history of Chicago architecture and its neighborhoods as well as find relevant, thought-provoking messages reminding you to stay in the moment.
Download or read book New York Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1981-09-21 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.
Download or read book The Lola Quartet written by Emily St. John Mandel and published by Unbridled Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gavin Sasaki a young journalist returns to his hometown of Sebastian, Florida, where a photo of a ten-year-old girl that reminds him of his high school girlfriend, Anna, makes him begin his own private investigation to track down Anna and their apparent daughter.
Download or read book Tong Wars written by Scott D. Seligman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mesmerizing true story of money, murder, gambling, prostitution, and opium in a "wild ramble around Chinatown in its darkest days." (The New Yorker) Nothing had worked. Not threats or negotiations, not shutting down the betting parlors or opium dens, not house-to-house searches or throwing Chinese offenders into prison. Not even executing them. The New York DA was running out of ideas and more people were dying every day as the weapons of choice evolved from hatchets and meat cleavers to pistols, automatic weapons, and even bombs. Welcome to New York City’s Chinatown in 1925. The Chinese in turn-of-the-last-century New York were mostly immigrant peasants and shopkeepers who worked as laundrymen, cigar makers, and domestics. They gravitated to lower Manhattan and lived as Chinese an existence as possible, their few diversions—gambling, opium, and prostitution—available but, sadly, illegal. It didn’t take long before one resourceful merchant saw a golden opportunity to feather his nest by positioning himself squarely between the vice dens and the police charged with shutting them down. Tong Wars is historical true crime set against the perfect landscape: Tammany-era New York City. Representatives of rival tongs (secret societies) corner the various markets of sin using admirably creative strategies. The city government was already corrupt from top to bottom, so once one tong began taxing the gambling dens and paying off the authorities, a rival, jealously eyeing its lucrative franchise, co-opted a local reformist group to help eliminate it. Pretty soon Chinese were slaughtering one another in the streets, inaugurating a succession of wars that raged for the next thirty years. Scott D. Seligman’s account roars through three decades of turmoil, with characters ranging from gangsters and drug lords to reformers and do-gooders to judges, prosecutors, cops, and pols of every stripe and color. A true story set in Prohibition-era Manhattan a generation after Gangs of New York, but fought on the very same turf.
Download or read book Public Libraries in the Smart City written by Dale Leorke and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-10 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from heralding their demise, digital technologies have lead to a dramatic transformation of the public library. Around the world, libraries have reinvented themselves as networked hubs, community centres, innovation labs, and makerspaces. Coupling striking architectural design with attention to ambience and comfort, libraries have signaled their desire to be seen as both engines of innovation and creative production, and hearts of community life. This book argues that the library’s transformation is deeply connected to a broader project of urban redevelopment and the transition to a knowledge economy. In particular, libraries have become entangled in visions of the smart city, where densely networked, ubiquitous connectivity promises urban prosperity built on efficiency, innovation, and new avenues for civic participation. Drawing on theoretical analysis and interviews with library professionals, policymakers, and users, this book examines the inevitable tensions emerging when a public institution dedicated to universal access to knowledge and a shared public culture intersects with the technology-driven, entrepreneurialist ideals of the smart city.
Download or read book Angel Island written by Erika Lee and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-30 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1910 to 1940, over half a million people sailed through the Golden Gate, hoping to start a new life in America. But they did not all disembark in San Francisco; instead, most were ferried across the bay to the Angel Island Immigration Station. For many, this was the real gateway to the United States. For others, it was a prison and their final destination, before being sent home. In this landmark book, historians Erika Lee and Judy Yung (both descendants of immigrants detained on the island) provide the first comprehensive history of the Angel Island Immigration Station. Drawing on extensive new research, including immigration records, oral histories, and inscriptions on the barrack walls, the authors produce a sweeping yet intensely personal history of Chinese "paper sons," Japanese picture brides, Korean students, South Asian political activists, Russian and Jewish refugees, Mexican families, Filipino repatriates, and many others from around the world. Their experiences on Angel Island reveal how America's discriminatory immigration policies changed the lives of immigrants and transformed the nation. A place of heartrending history and breathtaking beauty, the Angel Island Immigration Station is a National Historic Landmark, and like Ellis Island, it is recognized as one of the most important sites where America's immigration history was made. This fascinating history is ultimately about America itself and its complicated relationship to immigration, a story that continues today.
Download or read book San Francisco s Chinatown written by Judy Yung and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An evocative collection of vintage photographs traces the history of San Francisco's Chinatown, the largest and oldest Chinese enclave outside of Asia, from the Gold Rush era to the present day, capturing the realities of everyday life, as well as the changes in the community, the challenges confronting the Chinese immigrants, and its rich cultural heritage. Original.
Download or read book Forever Struggle written by Michael Liu and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinatown has a long history in Boston. Though little documented, it represents the city's most sustained neighborhood effort to survive during eras of hostility and urban transformation. It has been wounded and transformed, slowly ceding ground; at the same time, its residents and organizations have gained a more prominent voice over their community's fate. In writing about Boston Chinatown's long history, Michael Liu, a lifelong activist and scholar of the community, charts its journey and efforts for survival -- from its emergence during a time of immigration and deep xenophobia to the highway construction and urban renewal projects that threatened the neighborhood after World War II to its more recent efforts to keep commercial developers at bay. At the ground level, Liu depicts its people, organizations, internal battles, and varied and complex strategies against land-taking by outside institutions and public authorities. The documented courage, resilience, and ingenuity of this low-income immigrant neighborhood of color have earned it a place amongst our urban narratives. Chinatown has much to teach us about neighborhood agency, the power of organizing, and the prospects of such neighborhoods in rapidly growing and changing cities.
