Sadness and the City: A Look at Allen Ginsberg’s “My Sad Self”
By S. R. | I stood at a window, maybe ten stories high in a vacant office building, resting my fingers against the glass, pressing lightly, as if to test the strength of the barrier separating me from them. Them—the faces I could almost make out. The looks of sadness and joy I could almost […]
“A Something Not Found Elsewhere”: American Identity in the Catskill Mountains
By Ciara O’Neill | If you live in New York and like to travel around the state like I do, then you have most likely become pretty acquainted with route I-87. This past weekend, after waiting for a dreary week of rain to finish, I took this highway north to visit The Thomas Cole Historic […]
The Black Yankee: Jay-Z on Fame, Social Hierarchies, and the Yankee Hat
By L. S. | Yankee Stadium is the diamond-shaped, seven-story home field of the New York Yankees, located at One East 161 Street, in the Bronx. Seating approximately 50,000 people, the Stadium—and the New York Yankees—are staples of the Bronx community, so much so that the team is affectionately known as “The Bronx Bombers.” The […]
“The Red Record” on 20th Avenue and Bay Ridge
By J. S. | You’ve heard the stories. You may have even lived through them. We’ve certainly glamorized those times in spite of how dangerous they were. New York City during the 1980s was no walk in the park. It was downright scary. The birth of the AIDS epidemic left a portion of its population […]
Entwined Legacies: Piri Thomas and Spanish Harlem
By D. R. | Spanish Harlem has been home to countless authors, artists, musicians and actors. It encompasses 96th Street up to about 140th street from Pleasant Avenue to Fifth Avenue. It is the prototypical urban environment with high crime and constant police sirens. However, there is a charm about it and if you grow up here […]
La Marqueta: The Puerto Rican’s Past, New York City’s Present, And the Multiethnic Future
By Luis Machuca | Imagine for a moment that you could sink your teeth into a delicacy that has the ability to transcend space and transport you to a tropical island. That’s the kind of marvelous treasure that La Marqueta has to offer. La Marqueta is a marketplace and retailer established in 1936 by Mayor […]
“Reflecting Absence”: The World Trade Center Memorial Fountains
By Najee Johnson | The twin reflecting pools are located at the World Trade Center and are surrounded by five buildings. As a representation of the twin towers’ absence, the memorial fountains are placed at the former footprints of the North and South towers. The pools give New Yorkers, tourists, family and friends an opportunity […]
America, Can You Hear Them now?
By A. C. | At times, there’s an insatiable effort to neutralize the spirit of people. It’s cruel to ask someone to be less them, and consequently become more of something else. In Women Native, Other, philosopher Trinh T. Minh Ha states that “it’s a positivist dream of a neutralized language that strips off all its singularity […]
Waltzing out of The Lowell: Dorothy Parker’s Sojourn in an East Side Hotel
By Jalissa Cintron | Quickly splashing up the subway station stairs, I run in between drops of rain up Lexington Avenue. I soon find myself at The Lowell Hotel on 28 East 63rd Street, at Madison Avenue in New York City. Looking up, beyond the seventh floor, I cannot see. The sky is heavy and […]
A True Cock and Bull Story of Lower Manhattan
By S. G. | The Charging Bull, cast in 1989, currently stands in Bowling Green Park, which is located on Broadway and Morris Street in the historic financial district, in Manhattan, New York City. This massive bronze bull stands in the middle of the street, body leaning to one side in an aggressive stance—a main tourist attraction […]
Frank O’Hara’s Plaque
By G. G. | I am not an avid traveler by any means; my expeditions have been limited to adventures in movies, books and poetry. Frank O’Hara’s works are known for their diary-like quality, and through them you can explore New York. When I got on the train with my friend one Saturday our destination […]
Jackie and Pee Wee: An Embrace Against Racism
By F. R. | Brooklyn, New York is home to one of New York City’s most iconic locations, Coney Island. On Coney Island, you find attractions such as the Coney Island Beach and Boardwalk, the New York Aquarium, Luna Park, the Cyclone rollercoaster and the original Nathan’s Famous. If you walk down Surf Avenue, past […]
Ode to Orchard Beach
By Maritza Lopez | Orchard Beach, also known as the Bronx or Puerto Rican Riviera, is a man-made beach situated along the Long Island Sound in Pelham Bay Park. It spans 115 acres and is over a mile long with a promenade that allows beachgoers to walk up and down the beach without having to […]
Christopher Columbus Finally Reaches China(town)
By A. V. | There is a park located on 67 Mulberry Street in Manhattan, New York, close to the Brooklyn Bridge. It was designed by Calvert Vaux in the 1880s and was opened in 1897. Known alternately as Mulberry Bend Park, Five Points Park and Paradise Park, it was renamed in 1911after Christopher Columbus, […]
From Rat to Umpire: A Central Park Journey
By C. C. | It is often bypassed and ignored—after all it is just a rock. Most of the people who actually stop to see and admire it are tourists. More than half of them accidentally come across it while visiting Central Park. Umpire Rock is known to be a schist rock and is located […]
Displaying Christopher Columbus’ Monument in Central Park’s Literary Walk: What Are We Really Celebrating?
By Brandie Failey | Among the many monuments that line Central Park’s Literary Walk, there is a statue of the explorer Christopher Columbus. Huge and eye-catching, it inevitably makes you want to take a closer look at it. Columbus is standing with his arms outstretched while in one hand he holds what appears to be a […]
“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places”: H.P. Lovecraft in Brooklyn
By Zayna Marjieh | Isn’t it unsettling…that we can walk by a seemingly ordinary place and be completely oblivious to its extraordinary history? 169 Clinton Street in Brooklyn, New York is a completely unremarkable building. It blends into the Brooklyn cityscape like a grain of sand […]
The White Horse Tavern: A Writer’s Reprieve
By Kejana Ayala | Stepping into the White Horse is like stepping into the past. After being bombarded by antique white horses, from the marble-headed figurines to the engravings on the windows and light fixtures, you are then caressed by the original wood and design that imbues this neighborhood watering hole with a classical literary […]
Ulysses S. Grant: National Hero and Literary Extraordinaire
By E. V. | The Grant Memorial Tomb, situated on the corner of Riverside Drive and W. 122nd Street in Manhattan, is the final resting place of President Ulysses S. Grant, who was in office from 1869-1877. Grant Memorial Tomb is a marble and granite building constructed with a dome at the top. The building has an […]
The Bethlehem of Hip-Hop
By D. P. | By popular consensus, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, in the Morris Heights neighborhood of the Bronx, is regarded as the birthplace of hip-hop culture. The visitor to this address will find that 1520 Sedgwick Avenue sits in the middle of a mess of roads and waterways: Robert Moses’ Cross Bronx and the Major […]
West Side Story: The Classic Made Present
By Kejana Ayala | Whether or not we’ve seen it, we all know about Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ film adaptation of West Side Story (1961). A classic retelling of Romeo and Juliet based on Arthur Laurents’ musical, the film has echoed in our American culture for over fifty years through its tunes and romantic storyline and the […]
A Review of Nueba Yol
By Elaine Vasquez | “Nueba Yol de mi fantasia, porque New York es otra cosa.” – Balbuena When I was a little girl in the Dominican Republic, my dreams about America were distant from the reality. White people with green or blue eyes was all I pictured. Big streets, snow, tall buildings, tons of food and […]
Review of Entre Nos
By Luis Machuca | The aspirations, ambitions and ultimate disenchantments resulting from this country’s make-or-break reality are things that transcend national backgrounds and intimately resonate through many a dispersed migrant group. The Latinization of New York and other metropolises in the United States has unfolded with rather consistent uniformity in the various Hispanic subgroups. According to […]
Review of The Puerto Ricans: Our American Story
By Maritza Lopez | At the beginning of the documentary The Puerto Ricans: Our American Story, opera singer Justino Diaz sings, in his signature baritone voice, “En Mi Viejo San Juan” (“In My Old San Juan”) with tears in his eyes. A song known by Puerto Ricans, it expresses the diaspora of Puerto Ricans living […]
The Next Track will Leave You Breathless: Rihanna’s “American Oxygen”
By Eileen Sepulveda | While standing at the bus stop on a wintry, windy night scrolling down my Spotify librería and clicking on the most recently played, Rihanna is at the top of my list. Besides being a big fan of most of her albums with her bold, sassy lyrics and sexiness, she is truly one of […]
Review of Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America
By Nad | African drums booming in the background. Singers chanting “Awemoway, Awemoway.” The camera circumnavigates the forest. Nah, this ain’t The Lion King. This is Coming to America.
Hunter/Lehman College’s Band of Sisters
By D. C. | What we know as Lehman College today was originally the Bronx campus of Hunter College. Female students would take classes at the Bronx campus for two years and then complete the rest of their education at Hunter College in Manhattan. During the decade before the beginning of World War II, only […]
Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Bronx Zoo
By Faydelin Stoddart-Smith | In the early twentieth century, a human was exhibited in the same cage as monkeys in the Bronx Zoo. The Monkey House, also known as the Primate House, was a popular location at the zoo. It once housed grey-handed night-monkeys and apes, including a famous orangutan named Dohong. However, due to […]
