Overview

In Bronx Faces and Voices, sixteen men and women tell their personal, uncensored stories of the New York City borough—before, during, and after the troubled years of arson, crime, abandonment, and flight in the 1970s and 1980s. The voices in this volume are as eclectic as the Bronx itself: elected officials, religious leaders, and activists who were determined to preserve the beauty of their parks and stability of their community. They had the courage to stay and fight against drug dealers, absent and indifferent landlords, banks that red-lined entire neighbourhoods, and a voracious media that made of the Bronx an international symbol of urban disaster. Some are no longer alive. But each of the sixteen played a positive role in a pivotal time, and they all deserve to be remembered and to have their voices heard. Portraits in this volume by noted photographers Georgeen Comerford and Walter Rosenblum document the Bronx “faces” in their beauty and diversity: young and old, witnesses to the history they lived and created.

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9780896728882

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Reviews

"I have known and worked with nearly every one of those interviewed in Bronx Faces and Voices. I can still hear their voices and many of them inspired me and others. They were characters, to be sure, but Bronx originals all. Love them or loathe them, these ""voices"" were here and made their own unique contributions. The Bronx would not have been the same without them. And neither would this great assemblage of oral histories and images that Emita Hill has so thoughtfully served up to all of us. --Fernando Ferrer, from the foreword Bronx Faces & Voices is a portrait of an iconic American city and its people, whose families arrived from Europe, the Caribbean Islands, and the American South to make their homes and build a better world. Through sixteen oral histories, Emita Hill and Janet Munch show how Bronx buildings, blocks, neighborhoods, indeed the entire borough, defined its people in powerful, enduring ways. A chronicle of the American dream and of those who made that dream possible, Bronx Faces & Voices is a deeply moving book that every American should read. --William Ferris, author of The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists Now that The Bronx is again a vibrant mosaic of urban neighborhoods, and Charlotte Street an unlikely oasis of almost-suburban ranch houses, we are fortunate to have Bronx Faces and Voices, a beautiful oral history that captures the borough's postwar history and incendiary near-demise. This labor of love by Emita Hill and Janet Munch brings to vivid life some of the human and political struggles that ultimately saved and revived the Bronx of today. The photographs poignantly capture a difficult era. --Jill Jonnes, author of South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City I grew up in the Bronx. I have written a book about the Bronx. I read everything I can find about the Bronx. If you care about the Bronx, you really must read this book. I read it in one sitting and could not put it down. --Arthur Levine, President of Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and president emeritus of Teachers College, Columbia University"

I have known and worked with nearly every one of those interviewed in Bronx Faces and Voices. I can still hear their voices and many of them inspired me and others. They were characters, to be sure, but Bronx originals all. Love them or loathe them, these voices were here and made their own unique contributions. The Bronx would not have been the same without them. And neither would this great assemblage of oral histories and images that Emita Hill has so thoughtfully served up to all of us. --Fernando Ferrer, from the foreword

Author Information

Emita Brady Hill is the former chancellor of Indiana University Kokomo, USA and spent twenty years at Lehman College, the Bronx campus of CUNY, USA, in various roles, including department chair, dean and vice president, and professor of French language and literature, and was the program director for two NEH funded programs, The City and the Humanities and the Bronx Regional History Project. She lives in New Rochelle, New York, USA. Janet Butler Munch is an associate professor and special collections librarian at Lehman College, CUNY, USA. For the past 20 years she has worked with Bronx researchers and collections including Lehman’s Bronx Institute Archives of community oral histories, books, documents, maps, and photographs.

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