New Neighbors: Sunset Park's Chinese Community records

Call Number

1994.007

Dates

1992-1996, inclusive

; 1993-1994, bulk

Creator

Extent

6.42 Gigabytes

in 210 files, total running time: 43 hours, 7 minutes, 27 seconds (series 1); in three record boxes

Language of Materials

Materials in Cantonese, English and Mandarin.

Abstract

Brooklyn Historical Society collaborated with the Chinatown History Museum (now the Museum of Chinese in America) in order to conduct a series of oral histories with residents of the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. The Cantonese, Mandarin, and English language interviews focused on what was then a new presence of Chinese and Asian immigrants concentrated along Eighth Avenue. Among the topics that are explored in the interviews are tensions between different groups of Chinese immigrants, crime and safety in the neighborhood, Sunset Park's relationship to Manhattan's Chinatown, and how long-term residents of Sunset Park had adjusted to the area's "newcomers."

Administrative History

The New Neighbors: Sunset Park's Chinese Community oral history project began as a joint effort between Brooklyn Historical Society and the Chinatown History Museum (now the Museum of Chinese in America), with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and additional funding from the Ford Foundation. Awarded in 1992, the grant endeavored to explore how the new community of Chinese immigrants centered at Brooklyn's Eighth Avenue took root and blossomed during the 1980s. By the early 1990s, the community boasted a population of approximately 60,000 people and was known as New York City's third Chinatown.

The project's initial co-directors, Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier of the Brooklyn Historical Society and Mary Ting Yi Lui of the Chinatown History Museum designed the project to create primary documentation of the new ethnic community at a moment when many of its pioneers were still in place. They hoped to answer who these settlers were, and what political and economic forces brought them to Brooklyn. They could find no other materials which directly answered these questions, and believed this study to be the first of its kind in New York City.

By July of 1993, the project's staff had restructured to include coordinator Gregory Ruf and lead interviewer Ka-Kam Chui. Fabiana Chiu of Brooklyn Historical Society provided additional assistance in interviews.

Cantonese-language interviews were translated and transcribed primarily by Ka-Kam Chui and representatives from the Chinatown History Museum, and exist in handwritten form. English-language interviews were transcribed, and exist in typed form.

For specific information on language please see the scope and content note below for each interview. For the availability of handwritten original-language transcripts for individual interviews, please see transcripts in Box 2.

The oral history project concluded in June of 1996. The New Neighbors: Sunset Park's Chinese Community public exhibitions at both Brooklyn Historical Society and the Chinatown History Museum displayed the oral histories, photographs, and a narrative.

Arrangement

The collection contains the digitized content of twenty-nine interviews, digitized and print transcripts in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin (with English translations where applicable), and printed administrative documentation of the project's development, management, and exhibition. The collection is arranged thematically into 3 series: 1) Oral histories; 2) Oral History Transcripts; 3) Administrative Materials. Interview recordings were originally made on compact cassette tapes and are housed separately.

Series 1: Oral Histories makes up the bulk of the collection. There is audio for each of the twenty-nine interviews, all conducted for the original scope of the project. A complete listing of each interview with a biographical note, scope and content note, and controlled access headings follows. Interviews are also described in the Past Perfect archives catalog, including the audio and transcription where available. Digitized oral histories in Series 1 are in alphabetical order by narrator name.

Series 2: Oral History Transcripts contains handwritten and typed transcripts for each of the twenty-nine interviews, including those in Mandarin and Cantonese along with an English-language translation for most. For a complete listing of translations, participants, and dates of the interview, please see the Interview Lists folder in box 2. Abstracts of the interviews are also included in this series. Folders are organized alphabetically by narrator name. Each folder contains all available transcripts for that interview. When available, digitized transcripts are attached to relevant records in Past Perfect's archives catalog. Contents of box 2 were inventoried and remain unprocessed.

Series 3: Administrative Materials includes all retained materials that went into the funding and implementation for Brooklyn Historical Society and Chinatown History Museum project and exhibition. Materials are arranged as they were found; with separate files pertaining to grant funding, project planning, research, hiring, printed ephemera related to Sunset Park's Chinese community, and choice of narrators. This series has not been inventoried or processed.

Scope and Contents

Brooklyn Historical Society, in partnership with the Chinatown History Museum, initiated the New Neighbors: Sunset Park's Chinese Community Oral History project in 1993. Using funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, twenty-nine interviews were conducted documenting the experiences of both Chinese and non-Chinese community members whose homes clustered around Eighth Avenue in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. Chinese and non-Chinese members of the community were interviewed. While the ethnically-Chinese narrators were chosen to represent both early (pre-1985) and late (post-1985) waves of immigration, non-Chinese narrators were chosen to represent the different ethnic communities who shared the neighborhood with -- or had been displaced by -- the new arrivals. This included people of Latino, Norwegian, and Italian heritage.

This collection includes recordings and transcripts of interviews conducted between March of 1993 and June of 1994. Eleven interviews were conducted in English; fifteen were conducted in Cantonese; and three were conducted in Mandarin. Mary Ting Yi Lui and Ka-Kam Chui performed interviews in Cantonese and English; Gregory Ruf conducted interviews in Mandarin and English. Fabiana Chiu aided on one interview which was conducted with assistance in Spanish. The oral histories often contain descriptions of immigration, living arrangements, neighborhood ethnicities, discrimination, employment, community development, political leadership, petty and organized crime, and adjustment to American life. Also included is a small sampling of newspaper clippings, brochures, and administrative documentation of the project's development, management, and exhibition.

Subjects

Genres

Administrative records; Exhibition records; Interviews (sound recordings); Oral histories (document genres); Transcripts

Topics

Places

Bensonhurst (New York, N.Y.); Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.); Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) |x Economic conditions; Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) |x Social conditions; China; China |x History |y 20th century; Chinatown (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.); Chinatown (New York, N.Y.); Guangzhou (China); Hong Kong (China); Queens (New York, N.Y.); Sunset Park (New York, N.Y.); United States |x Emigration and immigration

Conditions Governing Access

Open to researchers with varied restrictions according to narrator agreement. Oral histories can be accessed onsite at Brooklyn Historical Society's Othmer Library and online on the Oral History Portal. Administrative materials are open to researchers upon request and are accessible onsite at the Othmer Library.

Conditions Governing Use

Use of the oral histories other than for private study, scholarship, or research requires permission of BHS. Please see the Oral History Note for guidelines on using Brooklyn Historical Society's oral history collections. For assistance, please consult library staff at library@brooklynhistory.org.

Preferred Citation

[Narrator Last name, First name], Oral history interview conducted by [Interviewer First name Last name], Interview Date [Month day, YYYY], New Neighbors: Sunset Park's Chinese Community records, [Call number]; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Materials contained in this collection were generated through the efforts of Brooklyn Historical Society and the Chinatown History Museum.

Related Materials

In addition to this collection, Brooklyn Historical Society has other oral history collections related to residents of Sunset Park:

• Puerto Rican Oral History Project records, 1960-1984 (1976.001)

• AIDS/Brooklyn Oral History Project collection, 1988-1993 (1993.001)

For more information on these collections, please visit our online finding aid portal.

Oral history collections related to the Chinese American community located at the Museum of Chinese in America include:

• Archeology of Change: Mapping Tales of Gentrification in New York City's Chinatown

• Chino-Latino Oral Histories collection, 1997-1998, 2003 (2015.007)

• Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance

• Many Voices, One Humanity

• 9/11 Chinatown Documentation Project

Existence and Location of Copies

This oral history collection is duplicated and stored on-site at MOCA's Collections & Research Center.

Oral History note

Oral history interviews are intimate conversations between two people, both of whom have generously agreed to share these recordings with the Brooklyn Historical Society archives and with researchers. Please listen in the spirit with which these were shared. Researchers will understand that:

1. The Brooklyn Historical Society abides by the General Principles and Best Practices for Oral History as agreed upon by the Oral History Association (2009) and expects that use of this material will be done with respect for these professional ethics.

2. Every oral history relies on the memories, views and opinions of the narrator. Because of the personal nature of oral history, listeners may find some viewpoints or language of the recorded participants to be objectionable. In keeping with its mission of preservation and unfettered access wherever possible, BHS presents these views as recorded.

3. Transcripts created prior to 2008 serve as a guide to the interview and are not considered verbatim. The audio recording should be considered the primary source for each interview. It may contain natural false starts, verbal stumbles, misspeaks, and repetitions that are common in conversation, and other passages and phrases omitted from the transcript. This decision was made because BHS gives primacy to the audible voice and also because some researchers do find useful information in these verbal patterns.

4. Unless these verbal patterns are germane to your scholarly work, when quoting from this material researchers are encouraged to correct the grammar and make other modifications maintaining the flavor of the narrator's speech while editing the material for the standards of print.

Collection processed by

Brett Dion and Maria Santiago

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 11:13:42 +0000.

Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Language: Finding aid written in English

Processing Information

Series 1: Oral Histories was initially digitized and cataloged at the item level by Alexis Taines and Niles French, oral history interns, in 2009, and Sady Sullivan, Director of Oral History, in 2010. Series 1 was compressed for streaming, uploaded and described by Maria Santiago and Margaret May, project interns, and Brett Dion, project archivist, in summer 2016. Many oral histories in Cantonese or Mandarin were described and indexed in 2016 by Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) staff, including Joy He, Yiyang Li, Yue Ma, Gengwu Wang, Chongyuan Wang, and Siwei Wang. Due to privacy concerns, the specific dates of birth of all narrators or other named individuals were redacted from the accessible transcripts and audio recordings.

Series 2: Oral History Transcripts was inventoried and remains unprocessed. Series 3: Administrative Materials was not inventoried or processed.

Repository

Brooklyn Historical Society

Container

Box: 1 (Material Type: Audio)

Box: 2 (Material Type: Audio)

Box: 3 (Material Type: Moving Images)