Pakistan League Banquet, NYC 1952 We need your help to identify the men, women, and children who appear in the photograph. Move your mouse over the image to view a numbered version. Click to view a larger image, which you can magnify to examine the photo in detail in a separate window. In October 1952, …
A guest post from S. Nadia Hussain, about the recent loss of her great uncle, Masud Chowdhury, one of the early members of New York’s Bengali community, who came to the city in 1946. Reposted from the blog Nadia Won’t Shut Up (Read more about Nadia at the end of the post.) Saturday, January 16, …
John Ali: Baltimore, Chester, & Beyond In this interview, John Ali, Jr. describes some of his memories of growing up with his father, Mustafa “John” Ali, a seaman from Sylhet, in the 1930s. John, Sr. had jumped ship in Baltimore in the 1920s, married John, Jr’s mother, Mamie Chase, and for a time moved their …
In November 2013, I spoke to Amina Ali Cymbala, whose father Mohamed Ali, was one of a group of Bengali ex-seamen who settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and married within the Puerto Rican community there. Part of our conversation follows below. She also shared the photo here to the left, which shows …
Order Today: Indiebound | Bookshop.org In the final years of the nineteenth century, small groups of Muslim peddlers arrived at Ellis Island every summer, bags heavy with embroidered silks from their home villages in Bengal. The American demand for “Oriental goods” took these migrants on a curious path, from New Jersey’s beach boardwalks into the …
Read more “Bengali Harlem & the Lost Histories of South Asian America”
Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian Americaby Vivek Bald
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