Full Record 

Vendor:

Alexander Street Press

Brief Description:

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories provides a personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada based upon personal narratives including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories.

Full Description:

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories includes several thousand pages of Ellis Island Oral History interviews, indexed and searchable for the first time, are included. The materials begin around 1840 and extend to the present, focusing heavily on the period from 1920 to 1980. People from many countries are represented, including more recent waves of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. In selected cases, users can to hear the actual audio voices of the immigrants or view images of their scrapbooks. Presents a broad, detailed, and immediate record of the experience of immigration, supporting research in history, sociology, ethnic and diversity studies, women’s studies, labor studies, and literature. Labor historians will benefit from details describing work in restaurants, meat packing plants, mines, railroads, and factories. Sociologists will find lengthy passages describing immigrant schooling, social life, domestic life, and community rituals. Students of literature will find descriptions of the events that inspired Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser. Users will find vivid descriptions of life under the Czar and the various revolutionary governments in Russia; tales of famine and poverty in Ireland; accounts of anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe; stories of persecution and fascism; and detailed descriptions of life in rural communities and towns as well as in major cities such as London, Berlin, and Moscow. Descriptions of initial encounters with soda pop, chewing gum, and bananas appear alongside reflections on labor conditions, political groups, and attitudes of the authorities.

Update Frequency:

Yearly

Coverage:

1800-1950

Number & Type of Contents:

Includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of contemporaneous letters, diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives from immigrants to North America.

Geographic Focus:

United States

Tools Available:

A Help Web site is available.

Formats:

Electronic Resource

Type:

Primary Sources

Subjects:

American History, Anthropology, History, Labor Studies, Social Sciences, Women's Studies

Liaison:

S. Tritt

URL:

http://www.alexanderstreet2.com/imldlive/