An Italian Lady Goes to the Bronx

An extraordinary ethnographic study that sets its sights on the de-bronxification of daily life. After her children leave for college, an Italian woman who has lived for years in New York City, and who formerly taught the "The Art of Listening" at a University in Mi-lan, decides to explore the South Bronx. She wanted to see for herself how people live and think "on the other side of the barricade." And one fine morning, flaunting the ad-vice and concerns of friends and colleagues, she donned her brightest clothes and em-barked upon her mission. In the three months spent in one of the most notorious zones of America's urban disaster - where Fort Apache, the Bronx was filmed in the 1970s, starring Paul Newman - she collected a wealth of material on the positive, construc-tive forces at work in the Bronx: the new urban pioneers. The book, which sites itself at the crossroads of the new journalism and urban ethnography, recounts the encounters and clashes between the author, her culture, and her expectations and her various personalities who guide her through the realities of daily life in the Bronx. Marianella Sclavi follows these persons throughout the course of their daily lives (she speaks of "shadowing" them), entering homes, school rooms, a courthouse, a union headquarters, and various churches and associations that host the meetings of committees doing battle for decent housing and the rebirth of urban community. And while doing so, she elaborates what she calls a "humor-based methodology for city planners, teachers, sociologists and administrators."