The Ghetto

Publication Instance Details #3179

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	No	No	No	Yes

Details

Human Rights Issues	Displacement/Forced Migration Gender-based violence Health Poverty/Deprivation/Lack of Sustenance Racism/anti-Semitism/Sectarianism Forced Labour (incl. slavery & child labour) HR Activism/Humanitarian Work
Languages	English
Genre	Lyric Sequence
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	This poem offers a panoramic view of the Jewish and immigrant communities of Hester Street in the Lower East Side of New York, in the early twentieth century. The poem is divided into nine parts and enacts a critique of capitalism to consider the plight of immigrant labourers. The speaker lives in a Jewish tenement with the Sodos family on the 5th floor. With references to the interior life of the working-class apartments as well as the busy commercial district of Hester Str., the poem interweaves images of the industrial woman workers who live in the slum (Sadie, Sarah, and Anna) with the masculine environment of the cafe in the neighborhood where men meet secretly to discuss socialist and anarchist politics. Set at the backdrop of the rise of populist anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic sentiments in the USA at the time, the poem alludes to violent events and racist attacks in contrast to an atmosphere of labour activism and progressive socio-economic reforms that took place evoked in the final part of the poem that highlights the endurance of these marginal communities against all odds.