Another New York Story

By Julie Douglas, Family Program Specialist

American Welcome, photo by Julie Douglas

To borrow a line from the film The Naked City, there are eight million stories in New York City. I recently traveled to NYC for the annual Humanities Councils’ Program Officers’ Meeting. For four days I was engulfed in stories.

The conference began with a tour of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Here visitors walk through the tiny rooms of a tenement, stopping in at the apartment of the Gumpertz family, Prussian immigrants who lived in the building in the 1870s. Another apartment at the museum depicts the life of the Baldizzi family, Italian immigrants who called 97 Orchard Street home in 1935. Soon, the apartment of Irish immigrants Joseph and Bridget Moore, who lived on Orchard Street in 1869, will be complete. Each apartment captures a moment in the lives of the immigrants, showing both the hardship and the hope that each family encountered as new Americans. At the end of the tour, our group gathered for a “kitchen table dialogue” where we discussed the issues that these families faced: language barriers, prejudice, poverty, and the conflict of trying to acclimate to a new country while keeping alive traditions of the old. Although the building and artifacts were historic, the conversations and questions were timely. In 2006, our country still wrestles with the issue of immigration.

Our facilitator in the dialogue challenged us to consider what makes someone an "other." When we view ourselves as part of a group, whether because of race, nationality, family, or an organization, we define ourselves and separate ourselves from the "others." One participant shared that in her home state you were considered an outsider unless your ancestors had lived there. Several people commented that because they were adopted, they had always felt connected to but never exactly part of their own ethnic group. Some distinctions between us and others are obvious, but many times the line between belonging and not belonging is very subtle. We all agreed that in some way we had all experienced being the "other."

My stay in New York ended with a visit to Ellis Island and once again I found myself retracing the footsteps of immigrants. What must it have been like to enter the great hall, unfamiliar languages hanging in the air, strange eyes scrutinizing you for signs of weakness or potential? I studied the faces in the photographs, looking for clues that would reveal their stories. Who were these people? What lives had they left behind? Where did they go after leaving Ellis Island? How did their American stories unfold?

The Great Hall at Ellis Island, photo by Julie Douglas

As a humanities organization, we value stories. When we hear someone's story, we may recognize something of ourselves there and our ability to empathize grows. Sometimes a story forces us to see with different eyes. A good story can make us uncomfortable and challenge our thinking about an issue. A really good story makes it almost impossible to stay quiet. We want to talk about it and hear what others think about it. We want to take some kind of action because of what we have learned. More than being entertaining or educational, stories are the catalyst for growth. When we hear someone’s story we become, in some small way, part of that story. And by sharing in someone else's story the line between "other" and "us" begins to blur.