Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough

Winner of the New York Society Library Book Award for Borough History and the Hermalyn Award for New York Urban History. Anyone interested in urban history, in American literature or, more generally, in how people shape and, in turn, are shaped by- place, will find Bronx Accent, authored by Lloyd Ultan and Barbara Unger, a fascinating book. Like some ingenious choral arrangement, the book contains scores of voices recounting, in fact and fiction, how life was lived in The Bronx from colonial times to the end of the twentieth century.

For the last three hundred years, and through all its social and economic transformations, The Bronx has been a major literary center that many prominent writers have called home. Bringing together a variety of past literary figures as well as emerging talents, this book captures the spirit of the neighborhoods through the eyes of its writers. Included are selections from the writings of Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain, James Baldwin, James Fenimore Cooper, Tom Wolfe, Herman Wouk, Theodore Dreiser, Washington Irving, Clifford Odets, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, Edgar Allan Poe, Chaim Potok, Kate Simon, Leon Trotsky, and Sholem Aleichem. Lloyd Ultan and Barbara Unger place the literature of these and other writers in historical context and reproduce one hundred vintage photographs that bring the writings to life. Filtered through the imagination of authors of different times, ethnic groups, social classes, and literary styles, the borough of The Bronx emerges not only as a shaper of destinies and lives, but as an important literary mecca.