How Eighth Avenue Became Chinese
[Editor’s note: Brooklyn’s Sunset Park has long been one of New York City’s solid working-class enclaves, thanks to its waterfront and the industries that sprung up around it in the 19th and 20th...
View ArticleWomen Worker Blues
Sapna NYC’s row house office feels like a well-worn living room. Everywhere, there are welcome markers of comfort: plush couches, a stocked kitchen, photographs of smiling women on the walls. For the...
View ArticleA More Fundamentally Caring Economy: an Interview with Ai-jen Poo
Long time domestic worker rights activist Ai-jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and co-director of Caring Across Generations, was among the winners of the 2014 MacArthur...
View ArticleArchitecture Reincarnated
When the breadth of religious practice in Queens, a product of the borough’s diverse ethnography, meets its pre-existing building stock, you end up with an unexpected architectural topography among...
View ArticleThe Counterculturalists: Alex Hing
[Editor’s note: This interview is part of The Counterculturalists, a project of the Asian American Writers Workshop that looks at Asian American and ethnic identity as an alternative, rebellious,...
View ArticleKarma on the Half Shell
At the Ou Jiang Supermarket on Main Street in Queens, live turtles, crabs, lobsters, and frogs sit in plastic tubs, awaiting their fate. Many of these creatures will travel in plastic bags to kitchens...
View ArticleThe Festival of Light and Liberation, Sikh Style
Indians around the world celebrated Diwali, the festival of lights, on October 23. The holiday—which celebrates the victory or light over darkness, good over evil, and truth over ignorance—is rooted in...
View ArticleThe Talented Master Khan
[Editor’s Note: This is Open City’s third installment of “Lyrics To Go,” a multimedia collaboration between Open City and Rishi Nath featuring conversations with audio and visual artists whose life and...
View ArticlePoll position
Pam Yam Cheung had been awake since four in the morning and sat at P.S. 130, the elementary school on Baxter Street. Her two sons are students there. But her kids were in their Chinatown apartment,...
View ArticleLittle Pakistan’s Mission Man
Shahid Khan has two faces. In Little Pakistan, he goes about his day-to-day life blending in with his south central Brooklyn neighbors, stopping to shake hands or nod an as-salaam-alaikum to those he...
View ArticleHarmonium Soul
It’s the third time I walk up to Mindra’s house, a nondescript white house on a quiet street off Jamaica Avenue in Queens. Mindra greets me at the door, wearing a t-shirt, sweatpants, and a warm smile,...
View ArticleChildhood in a Can
Growing up in Nantong, a small port city near Shanghai, China, my parents weren’t the successful doctor and homemaker they are now. We lived in a nice apartment, which was exceptionally cheap due to...
View ArticleThe Kind that Destroys You: an Interview with Nayomi Munaweera
Much of what’s written about South Asian countries charts natural and manmade disasters. One of these, the Sri Lankan Civil War — which claimed the lives of an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people...
View ArticleMo’ Momo fo’ the Masses
“The time is right for the momo. It’s the momo’s year.” That’s the prediction of Jeff Orlick, a Jackson Heights resident and Queens food blogger who organized the third-annual Momo Crawl in Jackson...
View ArticleThe Black Poster
Every day Columbia University’s Butler library is abuzz with hundreds of frantic students scuttling in and out, backs bent under textbooks and countless cans of Red Bull. They dash past advertisements...
View ArticleThe Spirit of Parshaada [VIDEO]
Sunday morning at the gurdwara, the smell of dough roasting on an open flame is unmistakable. And magnetic. “Pehle pangat, phir sangat,” says Gurmeet Singh. First sit together and eat langar, then...
View ArticleGuyana ♥ Country
“During our time we were starved for entertainment. Starved,” said Ramesh Kilawan. Ramesh, his daughter Kamelia, and I sit around their kitchen table on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. We start off round...
View ArticleGood Fortune, Long Life
[Editor’s note: The owners and managers of Pearl River Mart announced today that the store will be closing down after 44 years in Chinatown. Open City will publish a few features examining the store...
View ArticlePearls of Wisdom
When I arrive at Dumpling Galaxy in Flushing, Queens, Pearl Chow has already befriended the waitstaff. “This is Eric,” she says, gesturing to a tall young man standing attentively at her side. “He’s...
View Article