Jacob Riis In Waifs Of The City's Slums

Hughes uses powerful imagery as he describes the most ostracized groups in American society from which this voice derives: the poor white man “fooled and pushed apart”, the black man “bearing slavery’s scars”, the red man “driven from his land”, and the immigrant “clutching” onto hope. He uses stirring metaphors, “slavery’s scars”, to relay the image of suffering experienced by these forgotten

Jacob Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives is a detailed description on the poor and the destitute in the inner realms of New York City. Riis tries to portray the living conditions through the ‘eyes’ of his camera. He sneaks up on the people flashes a picture and then tells the rest of the city how the ‘other half’ is living. As shocking as the truth was without seeing such poverty and horrible conditions with their own eyes or taking in the experience with all their senses it still seemed like a million miles away or even just a fairy tale.

In How the Other Half Lives, the author Jacob Riis sheds light on the darker side of tenant housing and urban dwellers. He goes to several different parts of the city of New York witnessing first hand the hardships that many immigrants faced when coming to America. His journalism and photographs of the conditions of the tenant housing helped led the way of reformation in the slums of New York. His research opened the eyes of many Americans to the darker side of the nation's lower class. Though it seems that he blamed both the victims and the board forces of society, I believe that he placed more of the blame on the board forces for the conditions that many immigrants faced.

Infested with experiences and resentment like the rats in the tenements of contemporary New York City, Riis argues that the other half: the good living half; does not care about the struggles of the other half:

Riis wrote about different ethnic groups when he was living in New York. He wrote about greedy Jews, drunken Irish, and sloppy Italians. Riis also wrote with Christian morality. He blamed the faults of the above mentioned people on the poor living conditions that they were in. Like any other photographer or author, Riis’s motive must be figured out. It was already clear that he wanted change for the slums but in his pictures, the authors of the passage describe some pictures having Riis’s Christian morality in play. Riis highlights the needs for stable, wholesome families. The picture of page 191 is an example of a non-wholesome family. The home is supposed to be a resting place but factory work made its way into the home, making the entire family work. Photos like these were examples of Riis’s motives behind his photos. The photo on page 193 called “Room in a tenement flat” showed a family portrait. The room that they were in was very crammed and Riis again shows a family in poor living conditions. Riis also photographed many children, like the ones in “street arabs” on page 195. The photo is heart wrenching and captivates any viewer because of the pitiful place they had to sleep in.

Immigrants come from different parts of the world in many shades of white, brown, and black. In extreme cases, some immigrants are stereotyped as rapists, thieves, drug dealers, etc. or at the very least seen as second-class citizens. Depending if they support the issue or not, even the red or blue side of the political party, people tend to blind themselves from the reality of why they actually migrate. Natives tend to deny seeing the humanity in immigrants’ individual stories and lives. They not only migrate to different countries for better opportunities, but to find jobs to support their families and give their children a better education than they would have had in their country. George Saunders’ short story, The Semplica-Girl Diaries, relates to immigration because the SG’s reflect the treatment of immigrant workers in our society. The SG’s display women who have lived in extreme poverty and don’t have a better choice but to sell themselves to the rich as lawn

In the late 1930 unemployment rates were dropping at exponential rates, people were traveling west looking for jobs, hoping to gain even the smallest amounts of money. They were struggling to survive, fighting for jobs and living in horrible conditions. The Dust Bowl had wiped out most of their homes and many were desperate, people referred to them as migrant workers. The story Of Mice and Men revolves around the adventure of two migrant workers, George and Lennie. The book begins with a scene of nature, calm and beautiful yet cruel and complex. Much like nature, John Steinbeck's book tells the dark side of our nation and it’s people. Because of this, Steinbeck's book is still valuable to teach students. His simple yet complex story characterizes

In the late nineteenth and twentieth century many immigrants were migrating to the United States for an economic advantage and some by contract labors from various agents, much different from their predecessors. Thomas Bell’s novel “Out of this Furnace” is a generational novel of the characters Kracha, Mike, Mary, and Dobie, coming to America expecting to receive the American Dream and have a better life to soon return back home with riches. However, immigrants and many working class individuals undergo long hours and strenuous work, with minimal amount of pay. Not to mention, the living conditions were horrendous for the average person and particularly worse for arriving immigrants. There was a division between the classes which ultimately

In the United States early history, Native Americans, Africans and Europeans were marginalized by White People, and categorized as the minorities because they were seen as the inferior race. For nearly three centuries, the criteria for membership in these groups were similar, comprising a person's appearance, their social circle (how they lived), and their known non-White ancestry. History played a major part, as persons with known slave ancestors were assumed to be African (or, in later usage, black), regardless of whether they also had European ancestry. Most often these minorities face significant discrimination in various forms whether through voting, law policy, unequal pay, or even implicit racism, minorities of all kinds have been and still are being put down today. The book Between the World and Me is a letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s fifteen-year-old son, Samori. He weaves his personal, historical, and intellectual development into his ruminations on how to live in a black body in America. Not only does Coates give his personal experience in how he experience in first hand discrimination, racism, marginalization but he also gives vivid images on how he lived multiple worlds and how those experiences changed him. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldua exposes her feelings about social and cultural difficulties that Mexican immigrants face when being raised in the United States. She establishes comparisons among English, Spanish and their variations on how

As immigrants migrated to the United States, cities became cramp, living conditions were poor, and working conditions were careless. In document one, the image taken by Jacob Riis, in 1890, shows a group of immigrants living in a tiny and filthy room. It is clear that all five of the men live in that single room because there is a stove, pans, and a bed all in one area. It is also clear that they have a poor living condition because there are cracks in the wall and dirty clothes. Also, Jacob Riis is known for his work How

Tenement life was tough in New York City at the turn of the nineteenth century, as portrayed in the historical novel, City of Orphans. This portrayal depicted an immigrant family that was living hand to mouth in a tenement. This depiction is very accurate to the harsh reality that many families had to come to face. It was tough from the conditions, lifestyles, and space. Maks ' family was barely living off their earnings and was susceptible to disease and fraud. The immigrants were easy targets for poverty and sickness, and all too often fell through cracks in the floor. Their lives, as bad as they were, were not as bad as the ones they led in the countries they fled from to escape prosecution and to seek a better life.

Thousands of immigrants moving to America during the turn of the nineteenth century have faced extreme diversity on their quests to fulfill their American dreams. Immigrants faced a multitude of hardships and battled prejudices that were rampant throughout America during this time period. However, for the most part, Hilda Polacheck, an immigrant emigrating from Poland made out fairly well in her life. Hilda experienced what it was truly like to be a poor working immigrant, however, she was able to break out of the poverty cycle and was determined to make the world a better place. With this success she was able to step back and look at the social injustices being committed in the United States clearly, without being blinded by the hardships and the tragedies of being a poor immigrant. Throughout Hilda’s Autobiography, as well as throughout history, an immigrant woman in the United States faced extensive discrimination as well as vast and often unjust limitations on their inalienable rights as citizens of the United States.

The housing crisis in New York City disguises itself well, hiding in the back of commercial zones or illegal tenements. Jacob Riis, a reformer at the end of the last century, spoke through photographs of the City’s poorest neighborhoods to impress the issue upon the world. His book, How the Other Half Lives, was a cry to the public for affordable housing and livable conditions for the city’s poor. Ironically, as an October 1996 New York Times article points out, 100 years under the bridge has not created even a marginal move of progress. Contrary to the popular belief that hard work and fair play yield access to the “American Dream,?the Times article depicts the conditions of the working poor, the “all but homeless?class that exists day by day.

How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) was an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future "muckraking" journalism by exposing the slums to New York City’s upper and middle classes. This work inspired many reforms of working-class housing, both immediately after publication as well as making a lasting impact in today's society. Vivid imagery and complex syntax establish a sympathetic tone which Riis uses to expose poverty to the general public and calls upon them to take action and make a difference.

Roberts organizes his book based on certain themes, such as culture and day-to-day life, paying special attention to the pre- and post-War periods so as to emphasize the evolution of the slum throughout the period of time covered. He divides it into chapters that cover specific aspects of society and day-to-day life in order to accentuate certain points. His writing style is a unique and well-chosen blend of personal reminiscences and historical research. Much of his writing, including his own experiences, is presented in a very matter-of-fact way. The impact this style has on the reader is great because he is able to state such horrors so bluntly, as only someone who was truly there can. Occasionally, however, his emotions break through, as is evident in his explanation of his parents' separation and subsequent death on page 238. Lastly, the work is scholarly and concise, as Roberts chooses to get straight to the point and elaborate on it rather than saying the same thing in many different ways.