Wednesday, May 27 at 6:00 pm
FREE
Talking Leaves...Books and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center presents
Join us at Hallwalls for an evening with J Ezra Goldman to discuss his latest book, Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York: From the Suppressed to the Strange! This event will begin with a talk, to be followed by book signing. Books will be available for purchase from Talking Leaves Books. Purchase of your book from Talking Leaves and donation to Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (via cash or QR code on-site) are the best ways to support this event.
Jonathan Ezra Goldman's whirlwind tour of early 1920s New York City visits an all-female police platoon, a Black amusement park shut down before it opened, an Arabic literary salon, socialist Puerto Rican cigar factories, Chinatown funerals, lesbian cafes, overcrowded jails, toxic dumps, and Ku Klux Klan recruitment offices.
Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York offers a fresh, panoramic view of New York City in the 1920s, uncovering hidden histories from entertainment, politics, arts, technology, and the law. It unearths stories of everyday life and marginalized communities. The book portrays sweeping events such as the Harlem Renaissance, Prohibition, and immigration reform that counter the era's popular conceptions of ballooning wealth and uproarious celebration. The grand narratives of the 1920s interweave with little-known anecdotes about well-known figures such as Marcus Garvey, Dorothy Parker, and Babe Ruth, serving as a backdrop to the everyday challenges and triumphs of a city beset by crowds, automobile traffic, and rapidly changing technology and urban infrastructure, as well as erased stories of injustices like Jim Crow practices, immigration anxieties, and the violent treatment of political dissent. These stories still resonate today, showing that this dizzying, exuberant ride through hidden history can help twenty-first century readers see our own moment more clearly.
"Jonathan Goldman's Hidden Histories is a wonder and a delight--a lyrical and surprising historical excavation of Jazz Age New York that had me riveted from page one. You will find plenty of familiar figures (Dorothy Parker, Babe Ruth) between these covers, but even more exciting are the unfamiliar ones. This book deserves a prominent place on any shelf of enduring works of New York City history." -- Jonathan Mahler, author of The Gods of New York
Jonathan Ezra Goldman is Professor in the Humanities Department at New York Institute of Technology. His previous books include Modernism Is the Literature of Celebrity and Joyce and the Law. He lives in New York City.