In King Kong on 4th Street, Jagna Sharff chronicles an ethnographic team's involvement over a span of fifteen years with the people of a poor, largely Puerto Rican neighborhood in New York City. Anchoring her observations in field notes, she recounts the joys, fears, and disappointments of daily life as well as the drama of large events. Arson, the murder of a popular local teenager, the mobbing of a grocery store as an act of retribution for his deathall are projected onto a canvas of shifting local and national policies toward poor people and neighborhoods.Sharff provides new...
In King Kong on 4th Street, Jagna Sharff chronicles an ethnographic team's involvement over a span of fifteen years with the people of a poor,...