Section I: Here is New York
I New Yorkers and their Neighborhoods
- Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
- Katie Roiphe, A Coney Island of the Mind
- Langston Hughes, Subway Rush Hour
- Ralph Ellison, New York, 1936
- Anna Quindlen, Pregnant in NY
- Ian Frazier, Take the F
- Willie Perdomo, where i’m from
- Nelson George, Fort Greene Dreams
- E. B. White, Here is New York
II Immigrants and the American Dream
- Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
- Langston Hughes, Good Morning
- Anzia Yezierska, America and I
- Junot Diaz, The Money
- Claude McKay, Tropics in New York
- Frances Chung, Riding the Subway is an Adventure
- Yo Vivo in Barrio Chino
- Edwidge Danticat, New York Was Our City on the Hill,
- Suki Kim, Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits
III Urban Education
- Dewitt Clinton, Free Schools
- Colin Powell, My American Journey
- Bilal Rahmani, Chronicles of a Once Pessimistic College Freshman
- Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican
- Alfred Lubrano, Bricklayer’s Boy
- Howard Gardiner, Five Minds for the Future
- Claudia Wallace and Sonja Steptoe, How to Bring Our Schools into the 21st Century
IV Urban Art and Design
- José Parlá, Research and Memory
- Joseph Anastasio, My Life in Graffiti
- Berenice Abbott, Seventh Avenue (image)
- Manhattan Bridge (image)
- Lewis Wickes Hine, Sweat Shop, NYC (image)
- Riveters Attaching a Beam (image)
- Dinanda H. Nooney, Home of Basquiat (image)
- Joe Roifer and Friend (image)
- Rem Koolhaas, Prediction
- Donald Reynolds, The Making of an Icon
- Mark Naison, From Doo Wop to Hip Hop: The Bittersweet Odyssey of African Americans in the South Bronx
V Current Issues
- James Parrott, As Income Gap Widens, New York Grows Apart
- Brian Paul, Affordable Housing Policies May Spur Gentrification, Segregation
- Margaret Morton, The Homeless
- Ben Shepard, Fighting Police Brutality in Global Brooklyn
- Mark Berkey-Gerard, Youth Gangs
- Aarti Shahani, Legalization and De-legalization
- Courtney Gross, Despite Setbacks, Bloomberg Plan Has Made New York Greener
VI Exploring the Waterfront
- Russell Shorto, Henry Hudson, The Pollinator
- Walt Whitman, Mannahatta
- Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
- Ernest Poole, The Harbor
- Philip Lopate, The Brooklyn Bridge
- Jennifer Egan, Reading Lucy
- Gloria Deák, The People, Parks, and Ambience of Brooklyn
Section II: Literary New York
Fiction
- Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener
- Stephen Crane, A Dark-Brown Dog
- Edith Wharton, Mrs. Manstey’s View
- O. Henry, The Making of a New Yorker
- John Dos Passos, Ferryslip
- Ralph Ellison, Prologue to “Invisible Man”
- Monique Ferrell, Tu Sabes: A Story in Three Parts
- Mohammed Naseehu Ali, Live-In
- Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
- Ha Jin, A Good Fall
Poetry
- Mayakovsky, Brooklyn Bridge
- Hart Crane, To Brooklyn Bridge
- Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, Recuerdo
- Amy Lowell, The Taxi
- Langston Hughes, Lenox Avenue: Midnight
- Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You
- Hilda Morely, New York Subway
- Harvey Shapiro, Meditation on a Brooklyn Bench
- Honest Abe, Lost Son’s Self Assessment
- Taiyo Na, Lovely to Me (Immigrant Mother)
- Gangstarr, The Place Where We Dwell
- George Guida, Life in the New World
- Meena Alexander, Central Park, Carousel
- Toni Morrison, The Dead of 9/11
