Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America by Vivek Bald
Review of Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America by Vivek Bald
Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (2013). Published by Harvard University Press.
It wasn’t until college did I meet someone Bengali for the first time. Where I grew up in Maryland, there weren’t any Bengali people that I ever met, and so, when I moved to college in New York City, I was thrust into this world where there was suddenly so much more diversity than I had ever experienced.
When I went to the University of Iowa to the Summer Institute, that was the first time I was really forced to confront my ignorance and, in turn, I began to become more interested in South Asia as a whole. My education at FIT is what led me to specifically become more interested in Bengali language and culture, because we often discussed the garment factories in Bangladesh.
I stumbled upon this book when trying to find new books to read about Bengali culture and people. I wanted more context outside of the arts and the language itself, about migration and diaspora, and this seemed like the perfect book to pick up.
And so I did and I ended up reading it within three days. It was absolutely fascinating to read, to read the stories of the people who came here in the late 1800s/early 1900s. These were the original Bengali immigrants and they were lost to history, only to be seen and empowered in this book.
I’ve said a lot already! Let’s dive into the review. You can purchase a copy of the book here.
Book Blurb
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 heart of the segregated South.
Two decades later, hundreds of Indian Muslim seamen began jumping ship in New York and Baltimore, escaping the engine rooms of British steamers to find less brutal work onshore. As factory owners sought their labor and anti-Asian immigration laws closed in around them, these men built clandestine networks that stretched from the northeastern waterfront across the industrial Midwest.
The stories of these early working-class migrants vividly contrast with our typical understanding of immigration. Vivek Bald's meticulous reconstruction reveals a lost history of South Asian sojourning and life-making in the United States. At a time when Asian immigrants were vilified and criminalized, Bengali Muslims quietly became part of some of America's most iconic neighborhoods of color, from Treme in New Orleans to Detroit's Black Bottom, from West Baltimore to Harlem. Many started families with Creole, Puerto Rican, and African American women.
As steel and auto workers in the Midwest, as traders in the South, and as halal hot dog vendors on 125th Street, these immigrants created lives as remarkable as they are unknown. Their stories of ingenuity and intermixture challenge assumptions about assimilation and reveal cross-racial affinities beneath the surface of early twentieth-century America.
Content
Throughout the arc of this book, we follow the lives and histories of men who made it. In a time that was becoming increasingly hostile to nonwhite individuals, especially Asians, Bengali immigrants came into the United States and paved a distinctly unique life for themselves. From the peddlers of the Atlantic seaboard, who were cashing in on the fetishized demand for Asian goods, to the auto workers in Detroit and business owners of New York City, they beat the odds.
They couldn’t have done it alone, that’s for sure, but these men often didn’t speak English and came from the rural villages of Kolkata. As a native of Baltimore who wonders why there are so few Bengalis in my area, I never would’ve known that there once was a huge thriving community of Bengali-Americans in West Baltimore.
But, as our author writes, these men were lost to history. Not because we wanted to forget them. But because they didn’t fit the example of what the stereotypical Indian immigrant is. They defied the cultural norm of what was expected of them, utilized their resourcefulness to build massive networks all across the country and back home in India.
For the seamen who jumped ship, they could expect to go to an Arab or Turkish boarding house at first, and then a Bengali one. And, there, they would be able to meet friends who could translate the news from English to Bangla, get news from home, and send things via the network of seamen still on the ships. It was a truly efficient system.
From the get-go, I found this book fascinating not only because of the perseverance of the men who came to this country, but the interconnected nature that nonwhite individuals all faced together. Interwoven with the story of the Bengali immigrants who started new businesses here in the United States are the stories of the Black women who married these men, nourished them, and aided them in their journey that was marred with discrimination.
We often think about colorism only affecting Black Americans at the turn of the twentieth century, but these men were living proof that racism and colorism extended past Blacks. They were often lumped together with African-Americans due to their skin color, as Bengalis had a darker complexion, although at the beginning they enjoyed the luxury of being considered in-between the white world and the Black world.
But what is more interesting is that because their wives were back in India, the men who married into local Creole and Black communities completely integrated. While some of the peddlers’ marriages did not last and they ended up moving back home to Kolkata, many had children. These children often associated themselves as Black, and so they integrated seamlessly into the local Black communities without an issue.
When the peddlers stopped selling their goods in a way that was more national, they turned to their local Black community in New Orleans and sold to them instead. They lived in African-American communities. It’s this radical acceptance between colored people of the time, a radical acceptance that’s beautiful to read about. It reminds me that we’re all human at the end of the day regardless of where we come from or the color of our skin.
Overall Thoughts
I highly recommend this book if you’re into the history of migration, whether it’s anyone or from the Indian subcontinent. There’s some side parts of history that are also quite fascinating, such as how Punjabi traders were conquering their way through the British colonial towns, but the Bengali traders tapped into untouched territory: the United States.
There’s also some mariner history that I imagine many people would be highly unaware about, especially in regard to how exactly the ships were staffed and the racial implications that came along with this. While humorous and dark at times, these were very real people, ones who were left behind by history.
