"New York is the city that never sleeps. This luminous book peels back the cover of darkness over the city as it hums along in the night, revealing a hidden world populated by the thousands of women and men who work and live on the nightshift. Written with beauty and grace, Nightshift NYC weaves together cultural critique, vivid reportage, and arresting photographs to trace the inverted logic of the city at night. Russell Leigh Sharman and Cheryl Harris Sharman spent a year on the nightshift, interviewing and shadowing fry cooks and coffee jockeys, train conductors, cab hacks, and dozens of others who keep the city running when the sun goes down. Investigating familiar places such diners and delis, they explore some less familiar ones as well--taking us on walking tour of homelessness in Manhattan, on a fishing boat out of Brooklyn, and on into other little-known corners of the night. Traveling past the threshold of voyeurism into the lives of real people, they depict a social space entirely apart–one that is highly structured and inherently subversive. Together, these stories open a compelling view on contemporary urban life, and, along the way, reveal the soul of the city itself."
-From the University of California Press

Reviews

"The Sharmans' earnest infatuation with the project is endearing, and they're to be commended for exploring the class and racial factors that come into play on the night shift."
-Kirkus Reviews

"[The authors] contextualize the personal anecdotes of their subjects by seamlessly weaving into the narrative pertinent data on the economy, transportation, health, industry, crime, labor, homelessness, immigration, and New York City history."
-Library Journal

"Poetically written, sympathetic, and engaging, Nightshift NYC opens up an unexplored world of the experiences of those who work at night in New York. An excellent read."
-Kirin Narayan, author of My Family and Other Saints

"Nightshift NYC introduces readers to the shadowy nighttime world of work and social life in contemporary urban America. It's a breath of fresh air."
-Paul Stoller, author of Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City

 

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"Rich with the textures and rhythms of street life, The Tenants of East Harlem is an absorbing and unconventional biography of one neighborhood, lying just beyond most tourist maps of New York City, told through the life stories of seven residents whose experiences span nearly a century. Modeled on the ethnic distinctions that divide the community, the book introduces the old guard of East Harlem: Pete, one of the last Italians holdouts; José, a Puerto Rican; and Lucille, an African American. Side by side with these representatives of a century of ethnic succession are the newcomers: Maria, an undocumented Mexican; Mohamed, a West African entrepreneur; Si Zhi, a Chinese immigrant and landlord; and, finally, the author himself, a reluctant benefactor of urban renewal. Russell Leigh Sharman deftly weaves these oral histories together with fine-grained ethnographic observations and urban history to examine the ways that immigration, housing, ethnic change, gentrification, race, class, and gender have affected the neighborhood over time. Providing unique access to the nuances of inner city life, The Tenants of East Harlem shows how roots sink so quickly in a community that has always hosted the transient, how new immigrants are challenging the claims of the old, and how that cycle is threatened as never before by the specter of gentrification."
-From the University of California Press

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Reviews

"This book is simply excellent. The writing is fluid and compelling, the narrators themselves are fascinating, and the sense of place that emerges from the dense interweaving of narrative, academic research, and theory is rich and finely textured... Works like this could create a foundation for understanding the commonalities between memoir and oral history, or oral history and the personal essay. Anyone interested in works dealing with personal history, urban history, neighborhood history, all with easily accessible cultural and theoretical underpinnings, will want to read Sharman’s Tenants.
-Oral History Review

"This stylish and passionate book revolves around the life histories of seven ethnically diverse residents of East Harlem, including the author. Russell Leigh Sharman skillfully uses these life histories to discuss city-level and supramacro-level (national and transnational) conditions that shape life experiences and changes in East Harlem as well as microlevel social interactions within the neighborhood... This book is useful for undergraduate courses on race and ethnicity and on urban anthropology, and its clear, literary, and often witty writing style will prove popular with students."
-American Anthropologist

"Anthropologist Sharman (Brooklyn College) provides an ethnographic presentation in this significant and successful effort to reach nonspecialists and teaching and learning audiences. He effectively articulates the tension and confusion between individual choice and institutional influences. The narratives constitute marvelous expression and pleasant reading, and capture the cultural insights and "appropriation of histories" relative to Italians, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Mexicans, West Africans, and Chinese in East Harlem. Sharman's scholarship is aptly evidenced by the richness and timeliness of literature employed, and it efficiently addresses critical housing, education, crime, employment, and immigration public policy issues."
-Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries

"Sharman uses certain streets (106th, Pleasant Avenue, 116th) and a series of ‘life stories’, to make [East Harlem] come alive with the sounds of hope and fear. [He] lets his informants speak in their own voices about the traditional concerns of urban anthropologists: race, gender, poverty, mobility, identity and class... These case studies are an opportunity for the general reader to understand the changing face of Manhattan and its resilient people and economy.”
-Times Literary Supplement

"An excellent contribution to the history of East Harlem, history of ethnic immigration and social inequality in the United States, and finally to understanding the phenomenon of the ethnically and class segregated U.S. inner city."
-Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio

"The Tenants of East Harlem is an excellent and absorbing book on the way immigration and ethnic change have affected East Harlem and its residents. Through engaging, and often extremely moving, life stories of several residents of the community, Russell Sharman provides a window into the processes of change in this well-known New York City neighborhood."
-Nancy Foner, author of From Ellis Island to JFK: New York's Two Great Waves of Immigration