Polish American History Before 1939

Download or read book Polish American History before 1939 written by Adam Walaszek and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-20 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of private lives of the first and second generations of Polish immigrants in the United States is viewed from the perspective of migrants themselves. What did the migrants do? How did they behave? How protagonists (men, women, children) with their own words presented their experience? Their experience is compared with one of the other groups. The book discusses migration processes, formation of neighborhoods, experiences at work, daily and family lives, functioning of parishes and tensions related to it, and construction of people’s identities and their constant reformulations. Migrants created mutual-aid societies, which played not only economic, but also ideological and political roles. Experiences of immigrants’ children at home and at school are presented, mostly in their own words and from their own perspective. Cultural activities reflect constant changes of groups’ self-identity. The book also depicts the relations between the Polish migrants and members of other ethnic groups – in the streets, public spaces, politics, and within the Catholic church. People lived in pluri-cultural, culturally diverse, contexts, and thus relations with “the others” were complex. The panorama ended in the year 1939, when after the Great Depression, the group entered into a new period of transformation during the war.

Download or read book Polish American History Before 1939 written by Adam Walaszek and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The history of private lives of first and second generations of Polish immigrants in the U.S., viewed from the perspective of migrants themselves. What did the migrants do? How did they behave? How protagonists (men, women, children) with their own words presented their experience? Their experience is compared with the one of the other groups. The book discusses migration processes, neighborhoods' formation, experiences at work, daily and family lives, functioning of parishes and tensions related to it, construction of people's identities and their constant reformulations. Migrants created mutual aid societies, which played economic, but also ideological and political role. Experiences of immigrants' children at home and at school are presented, mostly in their own words and from their own perspective. Cultural activities reflect constant changes of groups self-identity. The book also depicts the relations between the Polish migrants and members of other ethnic groups - in the streets, public spaces, in politics, and within the Catholic church. People lived in pluri-cultural, culturally diverse contexts, thus relations with "the others" were complex. The panorama ends in the year 1939, when after the Great Depression the group entered into the new period of transformation during the war"--

Download or read book Polish American History after 1939 written by Joanna Wojdon and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-03 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the second in a three-part, multi-authored study of Polish American history which aims to present the history of Polish Americans in the United States from the beginning of Polish presence on the continent to the current times, shown against a broad historical background of developments in Poland, the United States and other locations of the Polish Diaspora. According to the 2010 US Census, there are 9.5 million persons who identify themselves as Polish Americans in the United States, making them the eighth largest ethnic group in the country today. Polish Americans, or Polonia for short, has always been one of the largest immigrant and ethnic groups and the largest Slavic group in America. Despite that, common knowledge about its social and political life, culture and economy is still inadequate – in Academia and among the Polish Americans themselves. The book discusses the major themes in Polish American history, such as organizational life and the structure of the community facing subsequent waves of immigration from Poland, its leadership and political involvement in Polish and American affairs, as well as living and working conditions, and the everyday life of families and communities, their culture, ethnic identity and relations with the broadly understood American society, starting from the outbreak of World War 2 in Poland in September, 1939, and ending with the highlights of the 21st-century developments. It depicts Polish Americans’ transition from a ‘minority’ through ‘ethnic’ group to Americans who take pride in their symbolic ethnicity, maintained intentionally and manifested occasionally. This volume will be of great value to students and scholars alike interested in Polish and American History and Social and Cultural History.

Download or read book Traitors and True Poles written by Karen Majewski and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2003-04-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During Poland’s century-long partition and in the interwar period of Poland’s reemergence as a state, Polish writers on both sides of the ocean shared a preoccupation with national identity. Polish-American immigrant writers revealed their persistent, passionate engagement with these issues, as they used their work to define and consolidate an essentially transnational ethnic identity that was both tied to Poland and independent of it. By introducing these varied and forgotten works into the scholarly discussion, Traitors and True Poles recasts the literary landscape to include the immigrant community’s own competing visions of itself. The conversation between Polonia’s creative voices illustrates how immigrants manipulated often difficult economic, social, and political realities to provide a place for and a sense of themselves. What emerges is a fuller picture of American literature, one vital to the creation of an ethnic consciousness. This is the first extended look at Polish-language fiction written by turn-of-the-century immigrants, a forgotten body of American ethnic literature. Addressing a blind spot in our understanding of immigrant and ethnic identity and culture, Traitors and True Poles challenges perceptions of a silent and passive Polish immigration by giving back its literary voice.

Download or read book The Exile Mission written by Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering the two distinct Polish immigrant groups after World War II - the Polish-American descendants of pre-war ecomomic migrants and polish refugees fleeing communism - this study explores the uneasy challenge to reconcile concepts of responsibility toward their homeland.

Download or read book Polish American Voices written by Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-29 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents 145 primary source documents of Polish immigrants from different waves and backgrounds speaking about their lives, concerns, and viewpoints in their own voices, while they grapple with issues of identity and strive to make sense of their lives in the context of migration. Poles have come to America since the Jamestown settlement in 1608 and constituted one of the largest immigrant groups at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. As of 2020, the Census Bureau lists them as the sixth largest ethnic group in the country. The history of their experience is an integral part of the American story as well as that of the broader Polish diaspora. Each of the ten comprehensive chapters presents a specific theme illuminated by a selection of letters, press articles, fragments of memoirs and autobiographical fiction, interviews, organizational papers, and other publications, as well as visual sources such as cartoons, posters, and photographs. Brief introductions to the documents and a "Further Reading" section offer historical context and point readers to additional resources. The book provides students and scholars with a broad understanding and an incentive for future study of the Polish experience in the United States.

Download or read book The Townsend Family in the Emerging American West, 1856-1926 written by Susan E. James and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-18 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the life of the Townsend family and the events that occurred during the period of 1856–1926 that shaped an expanding American West. Bryant and Julia (Riley) Townsend and their three children were born into an age of rapid change and competing cultures. Witnesses to a century of events that shaped a nation, their lives define the complexities and challenges of incomers who arrived in an expanding American West. From the Gold Rush to the California oil boom, from slavery to female suffrage, from Indian Wars to World Wars, the Townsends lived through violent upheavals, outlasting cities, societal beliefs and entire ways of life. Married in a mining camp in Nevada and relocating frequently, the couple embraced the momentary riches, shattering losses and personal disasters faced by a vast number of immigrants, foreign and domestic, striving to survive in an often-hostile landscape. Their lives and those of their three children, Minnie Edith, Bryant and Persia, form the architecture supporting an examination of multiple facets of the Western experience and are exemplars of the different populations that merged to form the American identity. This volume will be of value to students and scholars interested in American history, social and cultural history and modern history.