“New York belongs at daybreak to only me, just me.”
— Agha Shahid Ali. “Even the Rain”

“[…] unfurling nights of New York, / avenues / slipping into Cyrillic”
— Ilya Kaminsky. “Elegy for Joseph Brodsky”

Columbia University Libraries is pleased to announce the latest installment in our “New and Featured Books” series, a display of circulating items from our collections curated around a topic of contemporary relevance. Themes rotate each semester, with books selected in three categories: newly published titles, popular titles, and/or works by Columbia authors.

You can visit the display in the Butler Library Lounge, Room 214, and check out the books you wish to read at the Butler Circulation Desk on the third floor, at the Self-Check Kiosks in the main lobby or on the third floor, or through Columbia Libraries’ Self-Check app.

The theme of this installment is “Reading NYC, At Home Across the World”. The focus is on New York City’s diverse immigrant and multi-ethnic communities, their relation to the city, and their literary output.

Described as “the city of cities, the city of immigrants” by E. L. Doctorow (Ragtime), New York City is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse cities in the world. It has been shaped by successive migrations whose languages, histories, intellectual traditions, and cultural practices have contributed to its civic and cultural life, its dynamism, and its ability to continually astound, teach, and reflect the value of connecting across boundaries.

Writers have long imagined New York as a place of continual movement, encounter, and possibility. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s narrator, Nick Carraway, describes the city as appearing anew each time it is approached: “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.” More than a century earlier, Walt Whitman similarly envisioned Manhattan as a place of movement and exchange. In “Mannahatta,” he celebrated the “crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies, Tides swift and ample”; “Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the brown-faced sailors”, evoking a city connected to distant places through the continual circulation of people, goods, ideas, and histories.

Showcasing the work of Global Studies librarians, who develop and steward research collections across world regions as well as across the immigrant and diaspora communities connected to these world areas, “Reading NYC, At Home Across the World” demonstrates how library collections can create connections between the local and the global. The books gathered here invite readers to encounter New York’s diverse communities not as isolated cultural formations, but as part of broader histories of migration, exchange, displacement, adaptation, and belonging. In doing so, the display also highlights the role of Columbia Libraries in supporting a liberal arts education grounded in thoughtful and critical engagement with diverse histories, cultures, languages, and perspectives. New York is a city where histories overlap, languages and traditions encounter one another, identities evolve, and connections between seemingly distant places become visible. For Columbia students and scholars, New York also provides an important local context for experiencing and understanding globalization, migration, diaspora, and cultural exchange, and for contributing to their liberal arts education

The “Reading NYC, At Home Across the World” display brings these connections into focus through a selection from collections of Columbia University Libraries, books that illuminate the diverse communities, cultures, languages, and histories that intersect in New York City and extend across the world. It has been curated by four Global Studies subject specialists: Yuusuf Caruso, African Studies Librarian; Gary Hausman, South Asian Studies Librarian; Peter Magierski, Middle East and Islamic Studies Librarian; and Michelle Margolis, Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies, with the support of Pamela Graham, Director of Humanities and Global Studies, and Kaoukab Chebaro, Head of Global Studies.

 

To accompany the display, we asked four Global Studies subject specialists to reflect on the challenges and opportunities of collecting across languages, geographic regions, disciplines, and communities. Their responses offer a glimpse into the expertise and care involved in developing Columbia Libraries’ global collections. They also underscore the importance of preserving diverse voices and making materials discoverable to researchers working across ethnic and racial differences.

We invite you to explore the books featured in the display and learn about the communities, histories, and connections they represent. Contact information for each Global Studies librarian can be found at the end of this post. You can also schedule a research consultation with one of our subject specialists to learn more about Columbia Libraries’ collections and services, and about the histories and global connections that have helped shape our beloved City.

For contact info see here the Global Studies web page, with individual emails and contact info for the Global Studies selectors.

   

Building Research Collections Across Languages and Communities

Q1: The histories and experiences of immigrant and diaspora communities often transcend geographic regions, languages, and disciplinary boundaries. How do you navigate these overlaps in your work as a subject librarian entrusted with coverage of a subject and/or region? How do collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches shape the way you build collections and support research in these areas? How do you decide which voices, perspectives, and genres to prioritize?

A1: Yuusuf Caruso

The study of African immigrant experiences in North America and Europe over the last century is part of my responsibility for collecting materials in the field of African Studies. Most African immigrant communities are transnational. That is to say, many people of African immigrant descent in the United States, whether they arrived in New York City last week or three decades ago, have cultural, economic, family, linguistic, and political connections with their home countries on the African continent.

In order to decide what books to buy or what journals, print or online, are important, I try to keep abreast of historical, literary, and sociological trends about these communities. I routinely consult African and African Diaspora Studies academic publications, including books, book reviews, scholarly journals, and literary magazines, as well as a variety of news sources.

A1: Gary Hausman

I select most South Asia and Southeast Asia diaspora items if they are worth collecting for the Libraries and if they cross my collecting areas. I do limit certain purchases on my funds if they seem more appropriate for American Studies—for example, materials on the Vietnam War if they focus specifically on the American side. For information about materials on US foreign policy history, you may want to contact my colleague, John Tofanelli, British and American History and Literature Librarian; Humanities and History; Email: jt628@columbia.edu

A1: Peter Magierski

As a subject librarian working with collections on Islam and Middle Eastern studies, I also collect about Arab American and Muslim communities’ experiences in the States. I recognize that these communities cannot be understood through a single geographic, linguistic, or cultural lens. The Middle East and Muslim World encompass a remarkable diversity of peoples, languages, and traditions, from Arab, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Amazigh, Armenian, Assyrian, and Jewish communities to Muslims who are Sunni, Shia, Ibadi, and members of other traditions, as well as Christian, Druze, Yazidi, and other religious minorities. Islam itself extends far beyond the Middle East, with major Muslim communities across South Asia, Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America. In building collections, I therefore work across disciplines and collaborate with faculty, students, and other librarians to identify materials in multiple languages and genres, while prioritizing voices that are often underrepresented, including women, religious and ethnic minorities, immigrants, diasporic communities, and scholars from the communities being studied. This approach helps ensure that the collection reflects the complexity of Islam, the Middle East, and Arab American life rather than treating them as culturally or geographically uniform.   

A1: Michelle Margolis

The key in collecting in my area is to collect as comprehensively as possible in all areas relating to Jews and Judaism. There is some priority given to active classes being taught on campus, but in general, collecting is not only for now; it is also for the future. In addition to current scholarship, I try to collect in areas that are diverse and may have been otherwise ignored, while also ensuring that the major areas of research are covered as well. I collaborate with my peers when needed to find materials in languages I don’t speak or from vendors with whom I don’t (yet) have relationships.

 

Language and the Immigrant Experience

Q2: Can you comment on the language of these publications? Are these publications published mostly in English, or in languages of the communities of origin? In your opinion, what does the language of publications reveal about the immigrant experience and those who study it?

A2:Yuusuf Caruso

For this exhibit, I chose books about immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa published in the United States during the last 15 years or so. I did not include books about immigration in the United States that might contain only a chapter or two about African immigrants in New York City.  All but one of the titles chosen for the exhibit are in English. The one book in the exhibit is in French, a novel published in France by a well-known Franco-Senegalese author. Most scholarly works in print about the subject are in English. Most autobiographies or fictional works by African immigrant writers about New York City are also in English.

I have yet to come across any books on this particular subject in any African language; only a few are in French. I can think of three major reasons for this linguistic bias: the relatively recent emergence since the late 1980s in New York City of whole neighborhoods characterized by residents and small business owners who have migrated to New York from the same region or country in Sub-Saharan Africa; the history of African-born populations from the Sub-Saharan region in the United States during the 20th century, which reflects a general tendency for first- and second-generation African immigrants to adopt English and other aspects of American culture; and the predominance of English, French, or Portuguese in African publishing and reading publics on most of the African continent and in the Diaspora, along with the lack of a large and vibrant publishing industry in African languages, with the exception of Swahili.

The intended audiences for the selected publications are immigration studies scholars, the global African and African Diaspora Studies research community, and more highly educated African immigrants who read English.

A2: Gary Hausman

The publications on this subject are in multiple languages, though diaspora materials tend to be predominantly in English. But even within the English-language materials, there is a good deal of code-switching between language vocabularies, especially in fiction.

A2: Peter Magierski

The issue of language is complex because Middle Eastern diaspora communities in the U.S. publish in both English and their languages of origin, often depending on their audience, comfort level with their language of origin, or desire to maintain cultural and intellectual connections to their communities of origin. Many Arab American writers use English to reach a broader American readership, while others write in Arabic to preserve language and cultural identity.  Some writers moved between Arabic and English, depending on their literary and cultural purposes: the famous Lebanese and Syrian writers of the Pen League, for example, established presses and journals in Brooklyn and published in both Arabic and English at the turn of the century. Gibran Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet was famously published in English in 1923 and was not translated into Arabic until 1956.  Ameen Rihani (1876–1940), another Arab American Pen League author, for example, published extensively in both languages: his English works included The Book of Khalid, while he also published novels, essays, and political works in Arabic. More recently, IranNamag provides an example of bilingual Persian-English publishing and has devoted an issue to Iranian literary diasporas. Arab Americana, a new journal from Penn State University Press focused on Arab American life, is also forthcoming in 2027.

For books on Islamic communities, language is similarly diverse because Muslim communities in the United States include Arab, South Asian, Iranian, African, and other linguistic and ethnic groups. Contemporary novels such as Aisha Abdel Gawad’s Between Two Moons and Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf are written in English, while earlier writers such as Lebanese American ʿAfifa Karam published novels in Arabic through New York’s Arabic-language press al-Hudá. Overall, these choices show that language is more than a means of communication: it is a cultural choice and connection. This also reminds researchers that looking beyond languages of origin is essential to fully understanding Middle Eastern diaspora communities and their experiences.

A2: Michelle Margolis

The majority of these books are in English. Jewish immigrant communities want to fit in and to succeed; often they have left their homelands because of persecution and are looking forward to starting anew, and so they learn English and produce their works in that language. At home, they may continue to speak in the languages of their grandparents, but externally, they want to be understood. Although immigrant Jews in the past and present may have spoken many different languages, the unifying factor was and is Jewish religion and culture.

Describing and Discovering These Collections

Q3: Library catalogs rely on structured subject headings, labels, and descriptive language to make materials discoverable. How do terms about hyphenated identities help, or limit, the way these collections are described? What advice do you have for users who want to efficiently search our catalogs and identify works relevant to their interests around the various ethnic communities that form the fabric of New York City?

A3: Yuusuf Caruso

When searching the Columbia catalog, it is important to be curious and willing to do a little brainstorming. You can try searching by “Subject,” such as Africans—New York or Nigerians—New York, but it is advisable to also search by combining “Keyword” terms, including two-word phrases in quotation marks—for example, “Ghanaian Americans” AND “New York” or “African immigrants” AND “New York.”

If one is interested in fiction, try these keyword searches and then look for the word “Fiction” in the list of filters on the left-hand side of a catalog search result.

A3: Gary Hausman

Use search facets and formal metadata subject headings for advanced searches. Find one or two books that meet your search criteria, and then use the hyperlinks in the record to pull out more books with those subject headings. Use different variants of keywords: for example, not only the broader category “South Asian,” but also more specific terms such as “Indian,” Nepali,” “Tamil,” “Bengali,” “Desi,” etc

A3: Peter Magierski

Hyphenated identities such as “Arab American” are useful cataloging and search terms, but they can also obscure the diversity within the communities they describe. In How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?, Moustafa Bayoumi shows that there is no single Arab American experience: his seven young Brooklyn subjects differ in nationality, religion, family history, politics, and their relationships to being both Arab and American. This matters for catalogs because standardized headings can make a collection discoverable while still reducing complicated identities to a single category. The Library of Congress, for example, uses “Arab Americans” as an authorized subject heading but also distinguishes communities through headings such as “Egyptian Americans” and “Lebanese Americans.” At the same time, catalog records can reproduce the historical contexts in which Arab Americans have been represented, including headings such as “Arab Americans—Crimes against—United States” and “Islamophobia—United States.” These terms describe important histories of discrimination, but they can also reinforce the association between Arab Americans and violence, surveillance, and national security that Bayoumi and scholars document.

For researchers interested in New York’s many ethnic communities, the best approach is to treat subject headings as starting points, not definitions. Begin with broad terms such as “Arab Americans,” then try more specific national identities—“Lebanese Americans,” “Egyptian Americans,” “Palestinian Americans,” etc.—and search separately by religion, neighborhood, language, or topic. Combining identity terms with places such as “Brooklyn,” “Bay Ridge,” or “Queens,” or with subjects such as immigration, labor, religion, literature, or education, can uncover materials that a simple “Arab American” search misses. When you find a useful record, follow its subject headings (by clicking on the subject heading link) to discover the catalog’s own vocabulary and related collections. In other words, use the hyphen to open the search, not to define the community.

   

A Librarian’s Pick

Q4: Is there one book in the “Reading NYC: At Home Across the World” display that you would especially recommend? What makes it meaningful to you, and what do you hope readers will take away from it?

A4: Yuusuf Caruso

I have several suggestions.  For recent nonfiction, based on extensive fieldwork, I recommend American Murids: A Lived Muslim Practice of Nonviolence (2023) by Jonathan Bornman; and, Africans in Harlem: an Untold New York Story (2022) by Boukary Sawadogo.

For novels with complicated protagonists, I recommend Lucky Girl (2023) by Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu; New York, My Village (2022) by Uwem Akpan; and, the classic Open City (2011) by Teju Cole.

For drama, with humor, I recommend Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (2024) by Jocelyn Bioh. In 2024, the Broadway production of this play earned a Tony Award Nomination for Best Play and 4 other nominations. In the end, the play won the 2024 Best Costume Award and a Special Award for Hair and Wig Design. See 2024 interview with Bioh on ABC TV’s “Good Morning America” (via YouTube). By the way, Bioh earned a MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University in 2008.

*Note: some of the e-links in this section are for ebook versions of the print titles on offer in Butler Lounge.

A4: Gary Hausman

Good Talk, by Mira Jacob, is a graphic memoir from the perspective of a six-year-old. It deals humorously with issues of ethnic identity, particularly Jewish and South Asian identity.

A4: Peter Magierski

I would recommend A Community of Many Worlds: Arab Americans in New York City
 edited by Kathleen Benson and Philip M. Kayal 
It was produced in conjunction with a Museum of the City of New York exhibition and contains 17 essays covering immigration, Little Syria, South Ferry, community institutions, literature, Arab families, mosques, women, identity, and first-person recollections.

A4: Michelle Margolis

The Man in the White Sharkskin suit is a wonderful book that goes beyond the “typical” story that most people think about when they think about Jewish immigrants.  Jewish immigration to the US continues to the present day, and goes beyond Eastern Europe and World War II. Lucette Lagnado tells the story of her family’s flight from Egypt to New York in the 1950s, and shows a very different perspective of the Jewish immigrant experience. 

For something beyond this set, We Are Not Strangers is a beautiful graphic novel based on a true story of a Sephardic immigrant to Seattle and his friendship with a Japanese immigrant in the midst of World War II.

    

Selective list of books featured in this “New and Featured Books” display is available online.

Contact and Follow-Up

Please contact any of our Global Studies Librarians for further questions about our collections, or for research consultations:

Yuusuf Caruso, African Studies Librarian, Global Studies, 309 Lehman Library. Email: jc93@columbia.edu; Phone: 212-854-8045 ; Columbia’s African Studies collection page

Gary Hausman, South Asian Studies Librarian, Global Studies, 309 Lehman Library.  Email: gjh2119@columbia.edu; Phone: 212-854-8401 ; Columbia’s South Asian Studies collection page

Peter Magierski, Middle East and Islamic Studies Librarian, Global Studies, 309 Lehman Library. Email: pm2650@columbia.edu ; Phone: 212-854-3995 ;  Columbia Libraries’ MEIS collection page

Michelle Margolis, Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies, Global Studies, 309 Lehman Library. Email:: mc3395@columbia.edu; Columbia’s Jewish Studies collection page

You can also contact: John Tofanelli, British and American History and Literature Librarian, History & Humanities, 309 Butler Library. Email: jt628@columbia.edu ; Phone: 212-854-4356 ; American History and American Studies Research Guide